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| Don’t Judge Montana for a Single Body Slam | Don’t Judge Montana for a Single Body Slam |
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| This might have been Montanans’ splashiest national publicity week since Butte’s Evel Knievel crashed his motorcycle jumping the Caesars Palace fountains. | This might have been Montanans’ splashiest national publicity week since Butte’s Evel Knievel crashed his motorcycle jumping the Caesars Palace fountains. |
| On Wednesday, the night before the special election for Montana’s House seat singular, which, fun fact, used to belong to Pat Williams, Knievel’s less action-packed Democrat cousin, the Republican candidate Greg Gianforte allegedly (on tape) clobbered a four-eyed journalist who was trying to ask a pretty good question about whether or not 23 million Americans losing their health insurance might be, like, bad. And if that embarrassing incident didn’t whip up enough hubbub on cable TV, on Sunday, Missoula-born David Lynch rebooted his beloved head-scratcher series of yore, “Twin Peaks,” on Showtime. | On Wednesday, the night before the special election for Montana’s House seat singular, which, fun fact, used to belong to Pat Williams, Knievel’s less action-packed Democrat cousin, the Republican candidate Greg Gianforte allegedly (on tape) clobbered a four-eyed journalist who was trying to ask a pretty good question about whether or not 23 million Americans losing their health insurance might be, like, bad. And if that embarrassing incident didn’t whip up enough hubbub on cable TV, on Sunday, Missoula-born David Lynch rebooted his beloved head-scratcher series of yore, “Twin Peaks,” on Showtime. |
| For the record, as a Montanan who attended sixth grade in the same brick building where Gary Cooper went to high school, I prefer violence of the fictional, cinematic variety, especially when the age old conflict of man versus man is reimagined as short-haired Kyle MacLachlan versus longhaired Kyle MacLachlan. I heartily disapprove of real life violence. That includes assault perpetrated on a member of the press by a candidate whose TV ads were all about how bully he is for the Second Amendment because apparently he’s never heard of the First. | For the record, as a Montanan who attended sixth grade in the same brick building where Gary Cooper went to high school, I prefer violence of the fictional, cinematic variety, especially when the age old conflict of man versus man is reimagined as short-haired Kyle MacLachlan versus longhaired Kyle MacLachlan. I heartily disapprove of real life violence. That includes assault perpetrated on a member of the press by a candidate whose TV ads were all about how bully he is for the Second Amendment because apparently he’s never heard of the First. |
| If there are two Americas — or three, depending on how we’re all feeling about Florida — there are at least that many versions of Montana. Off the top of my head I can count the following constituencies: farmers; ranchers; miners; artists, including folk singers, though let’s not underestimate our potters; the inhabitants of two lefty college towns, Missoula and Bozeman, where I grew up; and the coastal refugees such as Mr. Gianforte, who was denigrated in attack ads as a “New Jersey millionaire,” which seems unfair to New Jersey, considering he was born in California and grew up in Pennsylvania before attending school in Hoboken, so maybe some sort of interstate blame-sharing accord can be negotiated. | If there are two Americas — or three, depending on how we’re all feeling about Florida — there are at least that many versions of Montana. Off the top of my head I can count the following constituencies: farmers; ranchers; miners; artists, including folk singers, though let’s not underestimate our potters; the inhabitants of two lefty college towns, Missoula and Bozeman, where I grew up; and the coastal refugees such as Mr. Gianforte, who was denigrated in attack ads as a “New Jersey millionaire,” which seems unfair to New Jersey, considering he was born in California and grew up in Pennsylvania before attending school in Hoboken, so maybe some sort of interstate blame-sharing accord can be negotiated. |
| If we count the seven sovereign tribal nations such as the Blackfeet and the Crow, our list more than doubles. Then again the “miners” include those coal miners our new president has such a crush on, but also the former copper miners and their descendants in the union-made socialist bulwark of Butte, a town so hard-boiled Dashiell Hammett once set a novel there. | |
| So what’s the tally — at least 14 varieties of Montanan? Fifteen if we include the summer roofers/winter ski bums affectionately known in my home valley as “dirt bags.” The dirt bags might look like a bunch of Hillary-voting hippies, but based on my five winters during the Reagan-Bush era tending bar at the local ski area, Bridger Bowl, they’re stingy tippers and therefore, I suspect, secret Republicans. | So what’s the tally — at least 14 varieties of Montanan? Fifteen if we include the summer roofers/winter ski bums affectionately known in my home valley as “dirt bags.” The dirt bags might look like a bunch of Hillary-voting hippies, but based on my five winters during the Reagan-Bush era tending bar at the local ski area, Bridger Bowl, they’re stingy tippers and therefore, I suspect, secret Republicans. |
| All of which to say, even though Montana is the fourth largest state and therefore one of the biggest red blotches on the Electoral College map, Montanans are not unlike the founders who came up with the Electoral College in the first place. If we have learned anything from the First United States Congress, it’s that a bunch of mostly middle class white Protestants all wearing the same powdered wigs (or down jackets) can be nevertheless too diverse and too geographically spread out to ever cohere. | All of which to say, even though Montana is the fourth largest state and therefore one of the biggest red blotches on the Electoral College map, Montanans are not unlike the founders who came up with the Electoral College in the first place. If we have learned anything from the First United States Congress, it’s that a bunch of mostly middle class white Protestants all wearing the same powdered wigs (or down jackets) can be nevertheless too diverse and too geographically spread out to ever cohere. |
| On Wednesday evening, after my sister sent me a message alerting me that Mr. Gianforte was being accused of shoving a reporter and breaking his glasses, I turned on the television and texted her back that it was all over cable news. “They should call Jeff Bridges!” she replied, referring to the movie star who lives part time in neighboring Paradise Valley. Citing Mr. Bridges’ protagonist from “The Big Lebowski,” she added, “This aggression will not stand, man!” | On Wednesday evening, after my sister sent me a message alerting me that Mr. Gianforte was being accused of shoving a reporter and breaking his glasses, I turned on the television and texted her back that it was all over cable news. “They should call Jeff Bridges!” she replied, referring to the movie star who lives part time in neighboring Paradise Valley. Citing Mr. Bridges’ protagonist from “The Big Lebowski,” she added, “This aggression will not stand, man!” |
| I cringed listening to the Gianforte tape for all the normal human and patriotic reasons. But also because it conforms to the Trumpian flyover rube stereotype that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the bookish, movie-mad, bleeding-heart tenor of my Montana college town years participating in what used to be called the “peace movement.” Which sounds so quaint and old-fashioned now that this country is so militaristic we will name a Navy ship after the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. | I cringed listening to the Gianforte tape for all the normal human and patriotic reasons. But also because it conforms to the Trumpian flyover rube stereotype that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the bookish, movie-mad, bleeding-heart tenor of my Montana college town years participating in what used to be called the “peace movement.” Which sounds so quaint and old-fashioned now that this country is so militaristic we will name a Navy ship after the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. |
| But back in my youth protesting the Iran-contra deal at the Federal Building, riding my bike 13 miles to hear Jesse Jackson speak during the ’88 primary, or handing out mimeographs denouncing the Reagan administration’s military spending in grocery store parking lots, my fellow ineffective progressives and I did not see ourselves as a bunch of beatnik outliers. We saw ourselves as carrying on the longstanding nonviolent tradition of Montana’s Jeannette Rankin, the only member of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted against entering both World War I and World War II and lived long enough to demonstrate against the conflict in Vietnam. | But back in my youth protesting the Iran-contra deal at the Federal Building, riding my bike 13 miles to hear Jesse Jackson speak during the ’88 primary, or handing out mimeographs denouncing the Reagan administration’s military spending in grocery store parking lots, my fellow ineffective progressives and I did not see ourselves as a bunch of beatnik outliers. We saw ourselves as carrying on the longstanding nonviolent tradition of Montana’s Jeannette Rankin, the only member of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted against entering both World War I and World War II and lived long enough to demonstrate against the conflict in Vietnam. |
| As I write this, Montana’s polls are still open. So many questions. Will the swells of outrage over Mr. Gianforte’s unacceptable behavior be enough to make him lose his second election in just over six months, even though he’s a Republican in a generally but not entirely Republican state and many early votes were cast before his hissy fit? Will the readers of this East Coast newspaper ever stop picturing Montanans as unhinged, authoritarian hotheads and remember that some of us are Lynch-loving, Lebowski-quoting, lily-livered lefties who have a postelection tradition of walking over to the Jeannette Rankin statue in front of the post office and putting our “I Voted” stickers on the heel of her boot even though we can see how that could technically be construed as littering? | As I write this, Montana’s polls are still open. So many questions. Will the swells of outrage over Mr. Gianforte’s unacceptable behavior be enough to make him lose his second election in just over six months, even though he’s a Republican in a generally but not entirely Republican state and many early votes were cast before his hissy fit? Will the readers of this East Coast newspaper ever stop picturing Montanans as unhinged, authoritarian hotheads and remember that some of us are Lynch-loving, Lebowski-quoting, lily-livered lefties who have a postelection tradition of walking over to the Jeannette Rankin statue in front of the post office and putting our “I Voted” stickers on the heel of her boot even though we can see how that could technically be construed as littering? |
| And finally, will Laura Palmer’s cousin Maddy from Missoula pop up somewhere on the space-time continuum of the new “Twin Peaks”? Because, like the vast majority of Montanans, she was nice. | And finally, will Laura Palmer’s cousin Maddy from Missoula pop up somewhere on the space-time continuum of the new “Twin Peaks”? Because, like the vast majority of Montanans, she was nice. |