Gunsmoke: Then and Now

          

I have to confess, I’ve always had a weakness for a good horse opera.  There was something about the wide-open range, good versus evil, horses as transportation and a cowboy’s best friend that appealed to me as a small boy.

I was lucky to have grown up during TV’s golden age of Westerns.  Every week, I could watch Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Have Gun: Will Travel, The Rebel, Wagon Train, The Big Valley, The Wild, Wild West, and I’m sure a couple others I have forgotten.  My grandfather’s favorite was Gunsmoke and most weeks we would all watch it together and let our imaginations roam with Matt, Doc Adams, Kitty and Festus.

Matt, Festus, Doc and Kitty

Now, thanks to a retro television station, I am able to once again watch Gunsmoke every weekday at noon as I eat my lunch.  As I began to watch the show again, I realized that each episode is a small morality play and many issues of the day were addressed as life was depicted in Dodge City each week.  As I watched the show, I began to think how different the show might be if it was written today.  The following is a description of certain story lines I have seen over lunch lately and how I think they may have differed if they were written today.

THEN:  The son of a small rancher, whose go-it-alone attitude and suspicion of his neighbors has isolated him from the people of the greater Dodge City area, falls down a well and is injured.  The rancher resists his wife’s pleas for him to seek help and tries to rescue the boy alone.  His neighbor, who is unaware of the situation, is out dynamiting stumps, which results in the well partially caving in and further injuring the boy.

As things go from bad to worse, Matt and Festus stop at the ranch to water their horses.  When they discover what has happened, Matt sends Festus back to town to round up shovels, picks, wheelbarrows and volunteers willing to help rescue the boy before the rest of the well caves and buries him.  Festus races to town and gathers up the necessary tools and a large group of townspeople who race back to the ranch.

The rescuers all pitch in and are able to bring the boy up just before the well collapses entirely.  Doc Adams has the boy carried to the ranch house where he treats his injuries, thus setting up a winning situation for everyone involved.  The boy wins because he lives.  The Rancher wins because he learns a valuable lesson about community and cooperation that is reinforced every time he looks at his son’s smiling face.  The town’s people win because they have that special feeling that comes from knowing their combined efforts have saved the life of a small boy.  This wasn’t in the script, but I bet they went back to town and had a square dance with Festus doing the calling.

NOW:  The boy falls in the well and the small rancher tries to rescue him by himself.  The neighbor, unaware that anything has happened, continues to dynamite tree stumps and the well partially caves in.  Matt and Festus stop by to water their horses and Matt sends Festus back to town to get help.

As Festus gathers a crowd of townspeople around him, he finds a certain reluctance of the townspeople to rush off and help this rancher that no one really knows.  Doc Adams joins the crowd and asks what type of health insurance does the boy carry and when he is told the boy has no coverage, he is hesitant to join the rescue party.  When Festus asks if Doc is just going to let the boy die, a member of the crowd shouts, “let him die” while others cheer.

Doc decides to stay in Dodge and the response from the town is limited and weak.  The well caves in before the boy can be rescued.  The boy dies a free man.

THEN:  Dry conditions are putting pressure on small ranchers and federal lands are opened up so the cattlemen can find land to graze their herds. The Cattleman’s Association, which is made up of the three largest ranches in the area, hires gunmen to limit access to the federal land to the members of their Association.  The head of the Association justifies their action by saying they need to keep outsiders from Texas from over grazing the land.  Festus tells one of the big ranchers that what they are really doing is using their power to restrict use of the land for themselves when it should be open to everyone.

Tensions grow as the small rancher’s cattle begin to die and they clash with the Association’s hired guns.  Matt and Festus form a small posse and, together, they defeat the gunmen and open the land to all.

Government Employees

NOW:  The dry conditions pit the Cattleman’s Association against the small ranchers over the use of federal grazing land.  When Matt and Festus try to make sure all citizens have equal access to the range, the Cattleman’s Association organizes a wagon train of people carrying signs that say, “keep your government hands off federal land,” demand Matt and Festus stop impeding the job creators and stay out of this fight.  The Cattleman’s Association promises a new round of campaign contributions to Kansas’ senators and congressman and a new law is passed restricting use of the federal land while excepting large operations.

The small ranchers go bust and their land is bought up by members of the Cattleman’s Association for a pittance.  The small operators and their families drift off the land and into the slums of the big cites where many of them die from causes linked to poverty.  They die free men and women.

THEN:  Three desperados kidnap Kitty in a plot to lure Matt into a trap.  The leader of the bad guys is seeking revenge against Matt, for apprehending his brother, who was eventually hanged for murder.  Kitty is held in an old abandoned ranch house where she is beaten and abused.  The leader stops his two partners from raping Kitty, telling them there will be plenty of time for that after they kill Matt.

Waton Woman?

When Matt finds out Kitty is missing, he puts Festus in charge of Dodge, and rides out to find his main squeeze.  Festus argues with Matt about going with him but Matt needs Festus in Dodge because a bunch of drovers are coming to town and the usual fist fighting, drinking and shooting is expected.

Matt tracks the thugs to the abandoned ranch.  During the ensuing shootout, Matt is winged (marking the 400^th time Matt has been “winged” during the 20 year run of the show), but manages to kill two of the crooks and capture the third.  Kitty, beaten and terrorized, is rescued before she has to endure even worse treatment.  Doc treats Matt’s latest gunshot wound and the third kidnapper is tried and sentenced to a long prison term.

NOW:  Three desperados kidnap Kitty in a plot to lure Matt to her rescue so they can kill him.  Kitty is beaten and terrorized but the leader stops his two henchmen from raping her until after Matt is killed.

When Matt finds out Kitty is missing he is torn between staying in town to protect it from the drovers and going immediately to find Kitty.  Normally he would put Festus in charge but Festus was laid off the previous month because government workers, like federal deputies, are judged to be over paid, entitled symptoms of a bloated government.  Matt decides to stay in town for as long as necessary to protect the town he is sworn to serve.

When Matt doesn’t show up to rescue Kitty right away, the leader of the gang cannot stop his underlings from raping and further terrorizing her.

After a long weekend of busting up fist fights, disarming drunks and filling the town jail with drunken drovers, Matt rides out to rescue Kitty.  After a prolong gunfight, Matt wings two of the gang and captures the other slime ball.  Kitty is returned to Dodge, where she tries to put the pieces of her life back together.

Here I have three alternative endings for this episode.

Ending # 1:  Kitty becomes pregnant because of the rape so the men are released on the grounds that it was not a “legitimate rape.”  The fact that “god’s little shield” did not prevent the pregnancy is evidence enough that Kitty encouraged and enticed the gang and the sex was consensual.

Ending # 2:  Kitty does not become pregnant offering some evidence that she may have been legitimately raped.  At the ensuing trial the defense cast doubts on Kitty’s character, after all she does work in a saloon and wears those provocative off the shoulder dresses.  The charges are reduced to a misdemeanor because the prosecutor has doubts about the state’s ability to get a conviction for the more serious charge.  The gang is convicted of the lesser offense, pays a fine and leaves town.

Ending # 3:  Kitty becomes pregnant as a result of the rape.  Because of the trauma, both mentally and physically, her rather advanced age, and complications of the pregnancy, Kitty seeks to terminate the pregnancy.  She is prevented from doing so by a new law that requires her rapists to have been tried and found guilty of rape before the pregnancy can be terminated.  The gang’s trial begins 12 months after the rape.  Kitty dies, a free woman, during childbirth.

THEN:  A group of U.S. Army soldiers go rogue and begin stealing rifles from the army and selling them to gunrunners who are selling them illegally.  Festus, returning from a fishing trip, stumbles on to the gunrunners.  With Matt’s help the gunrunners are apprehended and Matt goes about trying to convince the officer in charge of the battalion that he has some rotten apples he needs to weed out.  Matt and Festus are finally able to convince the officer and the rogue soldiers are arrested and lead away in chains.

NOW:  This script cannot be rewrote for today because any criticism of the military is considered un-American and no TV studio is willing to risk the blowback.  It is the one area of the U.S. government that cannot be audited or questioned.

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I guess our attitudes have changed in the last thirty years.  The one belief, apparently held by nearly half the population, is that the government is worthless, incompetent and can provide nothing of value to the country besides a bloated military industrial complex.  It strikes me as a really strange belief for half the population of a democracy to hold.  After more than thirty years of being told “the government can’t solve the problem, the government is the problem,” and “government needs to be shrunk to the size where it can be drown in a bathtub,” many of our fellow citizens hold these “truths” to be self evident.

It only takes a few seconds to disprove this belief by simply taking a cursory glance at our history.  Government involvement and leadership has been crucial to the economic wellbeing of the country from practically the get-go.  That useless, do nothing government’s involvement in the building of the Erie and Panama Canals, the transcontinental railroad, winning World Wars I and II, the building of the electric power grid, the building of the interstate highway system, air travel, the space program, our education system, and drug and medical research, just to name a few, have contributed mightily to the economic well being of the country.  The one thing they all have in common is that each of these accomplishments was a very large undertaking that lacked immediate profitability.  Only the government is capable of financing these types of projects on behalf of the citizenry.  Without the government’s participation, which is to say, the people’s participation, because in a democracy, the government represents the people, this country would be a banana republic, clustered along the east coast, dancing to the tune of some foreign power.

Our hatred of “government” now extends to the state and local level.  Again, it is easy enough to point out the local roads, sewage systems, hospitals, school systems, etc. that would not have been built without public money and involvement.  Many of our fellow citizens look at teachers, cops, firefighters and all municipal and state workers as drags on the economy.  It has spawned an attitude that some how defines a job as a clerk in a private business as vastly more worthy and valuable than a job in the public sector.

The most damaging aspect of these beliefs is that it fosters hopelessness.  If the representation of the people in our democracy is useless, corrupt, and it deserves to be drowned, then where do people go from there?  It makes it much easier for the demagogues to convince people their problems are the fault of black people, gay people, women, Hispanic people, or the 47%.

I’m not saying a healthy skepticism about our government is necessarily a bad thing.  We need to be ever vigilant when it comes to protecting the Bill of Rights and holding the government accountable for the things it does in our name.  It is also truth that there have been very serious government screwups that have cost the taxpayers dearly.  Let me let you in on a little secret.  I worked in a highly sophisticated Fortune 300 company for 25 years and there were some mighty big screwups made in those 25 years.  That is because the world is a complex place and people are human.  Mistakes will happen and we need to hold people accountable in both the private and public sectors. But, that is entirely different from taking a position that government cannot benefit it’s people or that it needs to be stripped down to where it’s only function is to provide for the country’s military.  To take that position is to renounce democracy and turn the country over to the oligarchs, who will fill the vacuum and our country will move ever closer to a place that is run by the obscenely wealthy for the obscenely wealthy.

We have faced these challenges before.  Today our crumbling infrastructure, eroding education system and our need to develop clean energy sources once again call on us to respond.  Most importantly, the clock is ticking on climate change.  We will either address these issues or the American experiment will end. It won’t be members of the Walton family or the Koch brothers who step up to address our challenges.  It will, once again, be the people, through their government, who find our path for a better future.

Who?  Who let the grouch out?