Quote of the Week: Mel Brooks

2 thoughts on “Quote of the Week: Mel Brooks”

1. I always liked him and to think he was married to Mrs. Robinson!

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2. 1

   I was taught in college one out of nine cowboys was black. I’ve heard as high as one out of four more recently.

   I’ve read contrmporary accounts of cowboys eating their chow and breaking wind (Le Pétomane).

   Crédit Mobilier and other land scanals were common around the railroads (“Land: see Snatch”).

   The black Sheriff Bart arrives in town and reads “By the power vested in me by the Honorable William J. Le Pétomane…..” With guns cocking in the crowd.
   Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Butte Montana May 27, 1903. There was a substantial Black community in Butte at the time, not always enjoying cordial relations with the whites. The President rode into the middle of race tensions. In a speech, referring to the Spanish-American War:
   “In Santiago I fought beside the colored troops of the 9th and 10th Cavalry. If a man is good enough to have him shot at while fighting beside me under the same flag, he is good enough for me……[by accounts sensing a tension in the crowd]……to try and give him a square deal in civil life……”
   And he got the hell out of town.

   I have long felt that Mel Brooks got more right about the American West, doing a farce, than all of Hollywood did, playing it straight.

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