Yes: ‘The World Needs More Cowboys’

Yes, the world needs more cowboys. Yes- those cowboys, but also in this instance: Wyoming Cowboys.

For those who missed out on the absurd controversy down in Laramie, some snowflake professors down in the Cowboy state were trying to claim that the University of Wyoming's new marketing slogan, "the world needs more cowboys," was sexist and racist. The Wall Street Journal had a great response, which you can find here.

I've also been getting some great feedback from our radio listeners here in Montana. Here's what Al Jones in Billings had to say:

For the 30 unusually ignorant faculty in the middle of the Old West and ranching country:

The Old West’s cowboy culture is HISPANIC, Spanish ranchers developed the concepts, equipment, organization, apparel, toughness, and even the rodeos. So it’s Northern Mexican culture adopted in former Mexican colonies (Texas, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona). The taciturn machisimo of the cowboy comes from that, just like the boots, spurs, saddles, chaps, hats, lariats, branding irons, short jackets, bandanas, etc. is Spanish with Mexican Mestizos and Indios (particularly in California and Southwest Ranches many tribal members became cattle and sheepmen, just like reservations today, particularly the Navaho.)
The tribes were cowboys in that they managed herds (bison, elk, and deer) on open range for their primary economies, replacing that with cattle and sheep as allowed by the BIA who often wrecked their livestock operations. See the book “When Indians Were Cowboys” or send the faculty on field trips to the reservations to meet native ranchers, cowboys, rodeo stars, etc..

For the Left it’s weird that “minority” usually only means apparent African heritage (with the drop of African blood meaning the person IS black rather than mixed, the old Democrats’ standard for who could be enslaved before 1865. Best estimates are 20-30% of Old West cowboys were black, about the same percentage with Hispanic roots and perhaps 5% American Indians. Many westerns have shown that so these faculty must be running on poorly remembered 1940’s westerns? There’s also a great number of Irish, a despised minority throughout the 19th Century, who were cowboys as the only job available and the Irish have herded cattle in Ireland for thousands of years.
It’s also dumb for the 30 faculty living among ranches to assume ranch wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, etc. don’t do cowboy work nor have local girls or college girls ever worked summer ranch jobs as cowboys since the earliest days. Ranches are FAMILY businesses with the whole family doing the work every day including calving, branding, roundups, veterinary, feeding, herding, fencing, etc. so apparently these faculty are feminists who don’t think women can be strong and independent in doing “man’s” work?

The guy who wrote “Shane” and “Monte Walsh”, both set in Wyoming, was a New Englander with a Yale Classical education. Owen Wister who helped pioneer cowboy fiction and myths with “The Virginian” written in Buffalo and Ranchester, Wyoming was a Harvard grad. If Ivy Leaguers can “get it”, clearly UW’s faculty hiring standards need upgrades to filter out this ignorant and foolish of faculty in the future. Protecting these sorts of clueless assertions is apparently the reason for faculty tenure?