He's Not a Cowboy!

The cartoonists have been having a field day with Cindy's challenge and George W's double super secret vacation, which is good.

But I have one bone to pick -- not just with the cartoonists, but with my brother and sister progressives. Please quit calling him a cowboy.

George W. is not a cowboy. He's never been a cowboy. He's an oil man, and a prep school/Ivy League/Skull & Bones cheerleader, born and schooled (sort of) in New England.

This may seem trivial, but it's not, because most Americans like cowboys. That's why the Crawford ranch was built in the first place -- because Karl Rove knew that a ranch setting was more popular and populist than an oil derrick. Especially an oil derrick sitting on a dry hole, which was the only type W had any connection to...

Where I used to live in southern New Mexico, there are real cowboys. They'd call W a "drugstore cowboy". Or, as my friend Jim Hightower often says, he's "all hat and no cattle".

What W really is, though, is a failed oil man.

And at $66 a barrel, an oil man is way less popular than a cowboy, even a drugstore cowboy...