U.S. President and reality TV personality Donald J. Trump performed his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He called it “The Great American Comeback,” and it all seemed to come back to re-runs of 1950s television Westerns. Mr. Trump outlined midcentury America’s whitest historical myths, and his reference points were all TV shows he saw as a toddler, Wyatt Earp (ABC TV, 1955 to 1961), Davy Crockett (ABC TV, 1954 to1955), and, with a nod at inclusion, Annie Oakley (syndicated from 1954 to 1957). He glorified How the West Was Won (MGM 1962 and MGM Televison, 1976 to 1979), seemingly reducing the genocide of Native Americans to some kind of divinely-ordained case of eminent domain. A reference to the Alamo (Disney 1955) overlooked the fact that Crockett and his comrades were illegal aliens in 1836, and some of them enslaved other human beings.
When Americans say “God Save the Republic,” we’re not not talking about the Republic Pictures Western fantasy films of Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. So Happy Trails, pardner. Only 270 days left before the presidential election. Saddle up.
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Image (“Trump on TV, with apologies to piñatero Dalton Avalos Ramirez“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Tags: Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, fantasy, Great American Comeback, politics, SOTU, State of the Union, television, Trump, TV Westerns, Westerns
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