A half century ago, a low-budget spoof on Hollywood Westerns became a box office smash and left an unexpectedly indelible mark on American cinema and culture.
As in the movie, corrupt politicians and their corporate backers employ the tried-and-true tactic of sowing racial discord to divide and conquer.told the tale of a daring sheriff who saved a fictional frontier town named Rock Ridge from greedy railroad profiteers. A well-worn plot, to be sure, except with one twist: the lawman, played by Cleavon Little, was Black.
Take Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent pardoning of a man convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester named Garrett Foster. In Blazing Saddles, the railroad foreman named Taggart laments the appointment of Little’s Sheriff Bart. He instructs Taggart to round up baddies ranging from rustlers and cutthroats to train robbers and Methodists., the Boogaloos, the NRA and MAGA cultists. One of the defining traits of reactionaries is to stoke — and ultimately to deputize “with stinkin’ badges” — vigilantes who can operate with sadistic impunity and, as needed, plausible deniability.
A few years back, San Antonio-baed Valero Energy and Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline tried to build a pipeline through a predominantly Black community in South Memphis and over an aquifer. The construction would have avoided a well-to-do white suburb. In early 2021, a spokesperson for the proposed pipeline said the quiet part out loud, describing the planned route as “the path of least resistance.
Valero Energy Plains All American Pipeline Blazing Saddles Texas Politics Sheriff Kevin Clardy Bad Takes
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