Then there is the cowboy the purveyor of macho cigarettes, sugarcoated cereal (""the historical cowboy was the very picture of malnutrition, but the cowboy hero might well hold a degree in home economics, so ardent is his praise of brand-name foodstuff""), coughdrops, painkillers, barbecue sauce, and laundry detergent. ""No matter how much the American people revere their heroes or tout their myths,"" says Savage, ""they will sell them all to any buyer and at nearly any price."" The approach is topical rather than media-oriented, though it is largely through the cowboy's media appearances that we come to know and love him.
With the (no doubt temporary) absence of the cowboy from the television screen, the cowboy hero is today most revered as rodeo performer-participant in a sometimes brutal sport that has nothing to do with cowboying. The author's description of the young western boy's initiation into the sport turns little-league horror tales into bedtime stories. The inevitable result of all this is summed up in the title of the last chapter, ""A Bore at Last.""
This book, often funny and expectable ironic but with a serious purpose, is bound to raise the hackles of the followers of the cowboy cult and others whose most lasting perceptions of the American West evolved from childhood cereal serials, B-movie horse operas, and latter-day television epics (did anyone ever actually see Hoss and Little Joe ride a fence line?). The fact is that, as Savage says, this book is, in the end, less about cowboys than it is about you and me.
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