Friday, August 1, 2025
Time: 7:38 P.M.
Song: Buffalo Bill
Artist: Slim Boyd and the Range Hands
Mode of Consumption: Listening to TV Western Themes
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/1Aq5KLtOPgQmFLbWv7UwRC?si=47103a6270ae47d0
Several years ago, we had refreshments after our church service. While waiting for the final treats to be placed on the serving table, I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman.
I don’t remember how it happened, but the conversation turned to some recent crime or something, and the fella said.
“I tell ya, I think we need to go back to some of that old west justice,” he said, shaking his head. I thought that was an odd thing to hope for. By general rule, the justice of the old west was if you the most money and most guns, you dictated justice. Mostly me and this old fella would be at constant risk because we probably don’t have enough of either.
As I listened to this album of old TV Western Themes, I was struck by one thing. It was all propaganda saying that the guy with the gun was always good and always right. It’s a myth of course, but one likely this fella and pretty much all of his generation heard over and over with these repetitive and often catchy jingles.
This one talks about killing red Indians, the assumption being they deserved it. It mentions him killing 5,000 buffalos in 18 months. No mention of nearly driving them to extinction.
It’s simply a song trumpeting manifest destiny masked in the likely exaggerated acts of Buffalo Bill Cody.
Having grown up a couple generations later, what I hear is that there is a class of people defined mostly by one characteristic that can kill and pillage at will and it will be lauded as brave and progress. For everyone else, it’s a crime and they are thugs.
No wonder we are where we are at this point in history.
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