[x1stcav]

Pokey,

It's nice, it's OK, but why do you serve us up with such easy targets?

[dighton]

Gawwwwwwd, what dreary stuff.

[nomorecameljocks]

The leftists are obviously desperate for anti Bush material.

[merrin]

So, they tried to ridicule him by calling him a "cowboy," and that backfired because the American people kinda like cowboys. So, now the new line is he's not a cowboy.

At least liberals have, uh, flexible minds.

[Fiddlstix]

What a bunch of useless drivel......
(Who cares?)

[Ymani Cricket]

They forgot to mention anything about pre-emptive strikes against known rustler bands operating in the area. Not petty cattle thieves here, except at first, but rustlers going after 500-1000 head of cattle at a time. Maybe the author of this article should try reading some other authors too.

[Let's Roll]

The only thing I know for sure after wading through this convoluted, navel gazing, self-indulgent tripe is Ms. Faludi doesn't know anything about Cowboys.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

Being a native Texan, I know Bull Sh!T when I read it, and I assure you, this is a pile of it!

[zarf]

Did Lola Falana quit her Vegas gig?

[Billthedrill]

While I respect Faludi for her iconoclastic reformulation of feminism, this is really a thoroughgoing mush. Bush is not a cowboy, he is a professional politician and the President of the United States. Projecting people into symbols and then shuffling the symbols around to attempt to produce meaning may be a high art in university semiotics classes, but to those of us for whom words have real meanings, it's just more futile intellectual masturbation.

[kayak]

Care to take a shot at this one, Luis?

[Ditter]

President Bush's family is New England blue blood. He was born in the east & came to Texas as a boy (age 11 ?) He lived in a mid sized west Texas town until he went back east to school. He is by no stretch of the imagination a cowboy, farm boy or country boy. He is a plain spoken, God fearing, honest man. Men like that can come from any background.

[okie01]

Did the New York Times run a contest for "Most Obscure Criticism of President Bush"?

And did Ms. Faludi win?

[Swiss]

That reminds me of a joke

Three strangers strike up a conversation in the passenger lounge in Bozeman, Montana, awaiting their flights. One is an American Indian passing through from Lame Deer. Another was a cowboy on his way to Billings, Montana for a stock show. The third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived at Montana State University from the Middle East. Their discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon the two Westerners learn that the Arab is a devout, radical Muslim. The conversation falls into an uneasy lull.

The cowboy leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table, tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face. The wind outside blows tumbleweeds, and the old windsock flaps, but no plane comes.

Finally, the American Indian clears his throat and softly, he speaks: "Once, my people were many... now we are few." The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans forward, "Once my people were few", he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"

The Montana cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a drawl, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet..."

[x]

I think Falludi has too much 50s and 60s television on her mind. What's next? Bush as Gilligan, Cheney as Skipper and Rummy as the Professor?

Wister's cowboy was a creation or construction of his own mind. For every Virginian in a white hat there was at least one villain in a black hat. For every good cowboy, there was a heel, as Falludi herself notes. Wister's hero was a good man who tried to do right, but I'm not sure how representative he was of the "cowboy code," or how much Falludi is really talking about actual cowpunchers and how much she's talking about the myths postwar America used to domesticate baby boomers. It's Hollywood that told us that to be a cowboy meant to be decent, upright and foursquare.

I'm not sure how much the opposition between Boone and Crockett that Falludi presents really holds. History or legend has it that Boone brought his people west but left as soon as he could see the smoke from neighbor's cabin from his own and he could no longer live by hunting -- A peaceful, decent fellow, but one who wasn't crazy about society. Crockett was elected to Congress and might have played a role in an independent Texas had he survived the Alamo, so he doesn't quite qualify as an anarchic spirit.

Walter Mead has compared Bush's approach, and Reagan's, to that of Andrew Jackson, a frontiersman Falludi doesn't mention. That looks to be a more sensible place to begin than a specious contrast of Boone and Crockett.

[unspun]

Sounds like a real America hater. I hope the FBI is keeping track of her.

[PoisedWoman]

Faludi ought to sign up for quilting lessons. She's patched together quotes from here and there to create, in her mind, a pattern, but this thing just doesn't hang together. I can't imagine anyone staying comfy and warm under her frayed logic. Too full of holes.

I'll leave it to someone else to speculate on what sort of hole she is.

[Erasmus]

To paraphrase Mark Twain, Ms Faludi's powers were under a cloud on the morning she wrote this.

[Nick Danger]

Oh look, a sh*tty little mean-spirited hit piece on Bush in the New York Times. Hooda thunkit?

[McGavin999]

Drivel. Too bad this woman doesn't have a clue what she's talking about.