I grew up with straight-talkers as my role models. John Wayne-types were the manly examples that the entertainment industry pumped into our homes. I have fond memories of sitting around the black and white Philco with my parents as the family watched real men gallop into our living room. Roy Rogers, Clint Eastwood, Paladin, Hoss Cartwright, The Lone Ranger, and their ilk left a masculine odor in my nostrils each night as I sawed logs in the bed I shared with my older brother.
The next morning we hit the yard running playing “Cowboys and Indians”, scalping redskins by morning, turning into Vic Morrow’s “Combat” and pretending to kill the Krauts by the afternoon. We lived out in the day what we watched on TV in the evening.
Pardon me for being so politically incorrect, but killing Krauts and scalping Injuns was a wonderful life for a young man to live. Today you can’t even use the name Indian. At least I wasn’t forced to play with Ken dolls and dance with Barney. The only Barney I knew was the lovable weenie on Andy Griffith. He was an endearing character because even my young eyes could see that he was a sissy-man who wished he was a real man. Somehow, I wanted to help him grow some hair on his chest.
But look at what they have on TV today? It is a steady stream of sissy-boys with moussed and frosted hair being offered to our impressionable young boys as “American Idols.” Instead of Gunsmoke and Matt Dillon we get “Dancing With The Stars” and Chaz Bono. Is it any wonder we have gender-confusion in America?
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