September 22, 2013 12:18:50 PM
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The Cowboy
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mostly Hollywood
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Starting perhaps with Twain or Harte and Zane Grey and going up through movies and TV shows and continuing in our current gun ownership disputes, the cowboy mentality of silent, lonely, independent strength, morality, hard work and the threat and use of violence has been a vital current in our culture. I'm a retired New Jersey English teacher, but cowboys have been part of me since I pulled my first imaginary trigger at about five years old.
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Guy
Comments [1]
Most definitely yes. The cowboy is one of the central and enduring American self-images -- even though the actual heyday of the cowboy only lasted 20 years or so, and the actual cowboys were not necessarily as we imagine (more people of color and young adolescents than one would think from seeing John Wayne and Gary Cooper.)
Exploring the reality of the actual cowboys, as well as speculating on what it means that our ideas about them are so much a part of our ideas of what it is to be American, would be very interesting.
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