The Cowboy Way

Kacey Holm
Riston Zielke
Animal Welfare Chairs
Saddle and Sirloin Club
North Dakota State University

Dear Messrs Holm and Zielke,

I read your club's apology for the black-face Obama skit, and I have to say I'm disgusted. Why is it that we Heartlanders are so often forced to apologize for the wrong thing? There's nothing wrong with a bunch of white, Christian, Midwestern cowboys getting together to demean minorities. It's our culture, our heritage. We should take pride in it.

It's like when that agricultural fraternity in Kentucky apologized for having a morale goat at their frat house. There was nothing wrong with that in itself. It's the way we keep our young men chaste in the Heartland. The problem was that the goat was male, and that fact changed the incident's character from a simple celebration of traditional Heartland values into something, sick, ugly, and perverted.

Yet, the fraternity did not apologize for that; they expressed their sorrow for having a morale goat at all. The way they framed their apology changed our cultural landscape. The very concept of having a morale goat around the house became something shameful, and we are now in danger of losing an important part of our culture now.

Your club made the same mistake by apologizing for playing Barack Obama in black-face. Like I said, denigrating brown folk is the cowboy way. Your apology was misdirected. You should have apologized for something else entirely: the two men in cowboy hats who were engaged in simulated bum jugging behind the corked-up Obama. That's not the cowboy way, and it's definitely not the Heartland way.

I don't know how much either of you were involved in drafting the apology or participating in the skit. I chose to write you because, as officers of the Saddle and Sirloin, you share some of the responsibility for the club's actions and perhaps more importantly, because when I saw your pictures on the club's website, a still, small voice deep within me said, "these are the guys you need to contact."

It's a shame your club chose to do that skit because you could have accomplished your club's goal, winning the Mr. NDSU pageant, by creatively applying traditional Heartland values to the selection process.

As you know, Mr. NDSU contestants compete in three events: formal wear, talent, and something called Bison Pride. You chose to employ a different approach to each. Wouldn't it have been better if you had treated the three events as one? It's a much more effective way of doing things. After all, it's how our Lord Jesus gets all his Holy Ghost, Creator, and Redeemer work done.

The Bison Pride event is all about our traditional values, and it's the spirit of that event that you should have served as the foundation for everything else you did. Think about it. Your contestant begins by parading into the Buffalo Pride event wearing chaps, codpiece, and vest all made out of brown buffalo suede accented with barb-wire nipple rings and chains to evoke the spirit of the West.

From there, your contestant, wearing the same outfit and accompanied by an inflatable buffalo, bumps and grinds his way through the talent portion to the tune of the Black Eye Peas song, My Hump. After that, it's just a quick change from brown buffalo suede to black buffalo leather and from barbwire to gold nipple rings and chains for the formal wear portion.

Doesn't that sound a lot better than the homoerotic cowboy porn your contestant actually performed? Maybe you can do it next year.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot