[POLS NOTE: We agree -- enough already]
In their story about the final passage of Colorado's gun-safety laws, The Denver Post's Lynn Bartels and Kurtis Lee referenced Colorado's alleged "Wild West" image, both in a headline ("3 new gun bills on the books in Colorado despite its Wild West image") and paragraph two, which noted that the bill signing took place 22 miles from the exact spot where "frontiersman Buffalo Bill Cody is buried, a tourist attraction in a state noted for its Wild West and independent background."
To be fair, The Post should have noted that Hick signed the bills about six miles from Aurora, where a mass killer with a gun last summer shot down 12 people in movie theater and wounded 70 others.
But beyond that nit pic, you really have to wonder how much of a "Wild West" image Colorado really has these days, outside of the mind of Sen. Greg Brophy (and even he has a pink gun).
The Post didn't provide a poll or anything to support its assertion of a Wild West image for Colorado, but you could argue that the "Wild West image" is now completely overshadowed by an outdoorsy, healthy, skiing, pot-smoking image that's completely in line with commonsensical gun-safety laws.
In that regard, it would have made more sense to point out that Hick signed the gun-safety bills two miles from LoDo, whose busting-out growth is emblematic of Colorado's dying Wild West image.
In any case, what Hick did yesterday was completely in line with the Colorado's modern "brand." Ask all those cultural creatives out there.
The Post's knee-jerk look back to Bill Cody needs to be revised.
Full story: Time for reporters to stop asserting that Colorado has a “Wild West image”
Thank you. Colorado is culturally diverse, and the urban Front Range is almost 90% of the state's population. This is a myth meant to keep the increasingly depopulated flatlands from feeling so bad about themselves. Outside that and the gaspatch, and even inside some gaspatch areas, we're trending urban, modern, and blue everywhere you look.
Not so sure.
When I moved here in 1980, I rode my bike to Palmer Lake and went into bar to have a burrito. In walked a cowboy with a six shooter on his hip. That was when I new that I was not in MA anymore.
This is somewhat maddening. Unfortunately, it is an east coast bias that gets picked up everywhere. When I went to Duke 40 years ago, when one kid at a freshman mixer asked if I road a horse to school, I said, no I grew up in a city of over a million people, in a suburb of over 100,000 and I walked to school just like all suburban kids did.
The total and complete ignorance concerning what has happened in Colorado since then on the east coast is still unbelievable. They just don't understand that our minority areas aren't really any different than anywhere else, Hispanics make up less that 20% of the voting population and blacks even less, that the state has pretty much become a Democratic state, that whites in the suburbs have swung strongly to the Democrats in the last twenty years, that we have a gay speaker of the house and more women legislators than any other state except NH, that we have lots of different cultures, and some they don't have, though ours tend to be more home-grown, that Denver has 3.5 million people, that most people here support some form of rational gun control, that this is one of the most pro-choice states in the nation, that we are one of very few cities that have the four major sports and have no problem supporting all of them plus soccer, LaCrosse and several other teams, that we have the lease obesity of any state in the country and one of the lowest smoking rates and a whole host of other stuff. But, we are west of the Missippi,so we count for nothing and are still backwoods.
Non-drinking, infrequent pot smoking, unaffiliated, progressive-libertarian anti-corporatist on social issues, fiscally conservative, gun owner with a carry permit, supporter of second amendment with reasonable regulation here.
Now what "category" do I belong in?
match.com might be able to help
Aw, come on. Let's let them keep identifying us with the very image of the traditional west. Considering we're solid blue in the state legislature with a blue (sort of) Governor and are among the states to legalize pot, pass some solid gun control laws and civil unions, Rs will just have to accept that maybe this is what their always distorted John Wayne, Hollywood created version of the wild, wild west is becoming.
Demographics are going to keep nibbling, then taking big bites out of their other western states. We've been playing the role of harbinger of things to come for quite a while now.
But they'll always have Clint and his empty chair.
There’s a little known warmly humorous song by Willy Nelson that sort of speaks to this, especially in light of the signing of the Civil Unions law.
It’s titled “Cowboys are frequently secretly fond…” I love it. But of course I would, right?
Willy wrote it in honor of his beloved long-time ?manager who came out to him as gay.
I’ve tried everything I can thing of to link it to this post. Please help, if you can. Even though I paid for it, I think iTunes has taken it back from my computer.
If you post it on tomorrow’s JamFest–or even link it–I promise I will pay off every debt that’s ever been incurred by all posters here on pols. (Yeah, like any of you ever pay off. So sue me, Donald.)
P.S. I haven’t the slightest what’s happened to my font. Suddenly, I can’t even access the “italic” button or other of the so called amenities of this new system. Apologies.
Weird. As I was typing the above, it appeared in ?Century Schoolbook? Now it's all normal. Whatever.
However, I'm serious: This Willy Nelson song should be shared here on Pols. I just can't do it. Please?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hajTNlooZKE
Moderate away Pols moderator. I didn't mention anybody's kids.
Thank you DP. I had not heard the song in several years.
Art teaches whether it is Willie or Robert Mapplethorpe
I really do agree with the premise of this diary. In my small town I've even heard judges use the "wild west" argument to find someone not guilty of assault because a beat down should have been expected. I've heard cops and councilmembers excuse bartenders selling to drunks who could no longer walk
and cops, at least in my small town, regularly have the view that when a woman gets a restraining order "the judge is taking her side"