slow-dog.entry27.05.2002: "news: iranian cowboys?"

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Saw this headline today: "Iran Says Bush Acting Like a 'Cowboy.'" I'm wondering why we should expect that Iran would know how a cowboy would act?

03:47 PM PST

Replies: 5 comments

From movies.

Posted by schnitz @ 05/27/2002 08:47 PM PST

Aha! But you'd have to have watched movies which as far as I know are banned by the committee of decency, or whatever they call it.

Posted by Sean @ 05/27/2002 09:34 PM PST

....and the cowboys are usually good guys in the films, right? We call the bad guys outlaws, or cattle rustlers, or something.

Posted by Sean @ 05/27/2002 09:37 PM PST

.....my point, though, was, or should've been, that this is a remark designed for Western consumption. The guy in the medina in Tehran (does Tehran have a medina?) isn't the one whose supposed to care that Bush is Wyatt Earp, but it's supposed to be a revelation for us. "Hey, our president is a living, breathing, Outlaw Josey Wales. What were we thinking?" Odds are the Defense Minister didn't get this from watching films, but from parroting Western commentators who have sniped at America's "Cowboy Diplomacy." My memory is a bit rusty, though, so now I'm trying to think of specific examples of cowboys behaving badly. Blazing Saddles references don't count.

Posted by Sean @ 05/27/2002 09:56 PM PST

Any Eastwood/Leone flick has Clint behaving atrociously. In The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, for example, he's completely psychotic and selfish.

The worldwide image of a "cowboy" has evolved from the movies it came from. Nowadays, especially in the Middle East, it's shorthand for their perception of American foreign policy: trigger-happy, not too bright, and rough. It doesn't matter that they haven't seen cowboy flicks. *I* haven't read the Koran but I know what they mean by "infidel."

Besides, everyone -- everyone -- watches old westerns.

Posted by schnitz @ 05/28/2002 12:35 PM PST