{"id":191,"date":"2008-10-10T07:52:19","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T07:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html"},"modified":"2008-10-10T07:52:19","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T07:52:19","slug":"high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html","title":{"rendered":"High Noon: The campaign as a Western movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

But who are the Good Guys? John McCain and Sarah Palin think they are, and in this piece in the current issue of The Tablet of London<\/a>, I try to explain the campaign through the lens of the Old West:<\/p>\n

\n

\n\"Tablet<\/span>Now, in 2008, with terrorists posing a new threat, a new sheriff walks down these dusty streets, with a faithful but fiery gal by his side, ready to take on the evildoers: John McCain of Arizona and his trusty sidekick, Sarah Palin of Alaska. So thorough is the “Westernisation” of the Republican presidential ticket that the cover of The Weekly Standard, the flagship periodical of the neoconservative right, depicted McCain and Palin as Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in the classic High Noon. It all works (even that all-too-noticeable age difference). McCain plays up his reputation as a “maverick” – also the title of a popular 1960s TV series and a 1994 film remake – and Palin is routinely described as a pistol-packin’ mama who talks as straight as she shoots and would just as soon field dress an opponent as debate him.<\/p>\n

That was certainly the case during the debate on 2 October between the vice-presidential candidates. Palin’s Democratic counterpart is Joe Biden, the senior senator from the tiny Eastern seaboard state of Delaware, and throughout their 90-minute duel Palin repeatedly underscored their divergent pedigrees by mixing tough talk and folksy charm and invoking the term “maverick” so many times, it threatened to become a verbal stampede.<\/p>\n

Yet the paradox of all this Republican campaign hype is that the sturdy conservatism of the Old West is largely a myth, a national legend whose fictions McCain and Palin themselves represent. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Will it work? Or will the McCain\/Palin tough talk backfire? Maybe they should stick with the “Star Trek” motif… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But who are the Good Guys? John McCain and Sarah Palin think they are, and in this piece in the current issue of The Tablet of London, I try to explain the campaign through the lens of the Old West: Now, in 2008, with terrorists posing a new threat, a new sheriff walks down these…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,51,9,69,26],"tags":[198,199,200,6,94,202,201],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-media","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-terrorism","category-war","tag-gary-cooper","tag-grace-kelly","tag-high-noon","tag-mccain","tag-palin","tag-the-tablet","tag-western-movie"],"yoast_head":"\nHigh Noon: The campaign as a Western movie - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"High Noon: The campaign as a Western movie - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"But who are the Good Guys? John McCain and Sarah Palin think they are, and in this piece in the current issue of The Tablet of London, I try to explain the campaign through the lens of the Old West: Now, in 2008, with terrorists posing a new threat, a new sheriff walks down these…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-10T07:52:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Tablet%20cover--The%20Wild%20West.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"High Noon: The campaign as a Western movie - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"High Noon: The campaign as a Western movie - Progressive Revival","og_description":"But who are the Good Guys? John McCain and Sarah Palin think they are, and in this piece in the current issue of The Tablet of London, I try to explain the campaign through the lens of the Old West: Now, in 2008, with terrorists posing a new threat, a new sheriff walks down these…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2008-10-10T07:52:19+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Tablet%20cover--The%20Wild%20West.jpg"}],"author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html","name":"High Noon: The campaign as a Western movie - Progressive Revival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Tablet%20cover--The%20Wild%20West.jpg","datePublished":"2008-10-10T07:52:19+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-10T07:52:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Tablet%20cover--The%20Wild%20West.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/files\/import\/imgs\/Tablet%20cover--The%20Wild%20West.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/high-noon-the-campaign-as-a-we.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"High Noon: The campaign as a Western movie"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/","name":"Progressive Revival","description":"Politics from the New Religious Progressives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}