photo #1752061

Odd thing happened this morning. I woke up (that's not the odd thing, I try to do that most every day). And of course first thing was COFFEE! Then I turned on the boob tube, and much to my dismay… There were no boobies on the screen. But I digress. Anyway, it was an old western. An older than me western. "Sitting Bull" to be exact. And for all the complaints about how the entertainment industry had been so very racist back in the day. I laughed out loud. A Native American (you know, people we can't call "Indians" any more because it's, well, it's insensitive.) Then there was a Black man. On his own horse. Not a cotton plant anywhere in sight to be picked, much less even seen out their in the wilds. Nope, he was just one of the guys. And finally a White guy, Dale Robertson. Apparently producers felt they had to add in a White guy since they knew the demographics of who went to theaters. And to make this even more extraordinary, this flick was in color! So there you have it, racist Hollywood on display in a movie released in 1954, a year in which I wasn't even yet conceived, nothing more than a gleam in my dad's eye… And the only boobies were on the babes. So my take on the whole notion of race in the entertainment category is more summed up in Sitting Bull as opposed to the nearly 70 year old notion of Hollywood today… And yes, it does rhyme with Sitting Bull.