John Wayne Would Have Eaten David Letterman for Breakfast: Honor and Patriotism, 30-Year Anniversary of Wayne’s Death
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 11, 2009
John Wayne, one of the good guys...
Exactly 30 years ago today, a great American and popular film star passed away after a long bout of cancer. His patriotism and love of America and her many freedoms are still inspirational… for me, goose-bump-producing. John Wayne—The Duke—was a patriotic icon of all that we love and are proud about America.
John Wayne, you are sorely missed. When will anyone with your passion, your conservative values, your unabashed love for our country rise again from the shallow, self-absorbed masses of left-wing Hollywood? Despots and dictators… embraced by the depraved. For Wayne, honor and loyalty and character meant more than just empty rhetoric. Being a man to Wayne meant taking responsibility, supporting and defending America, respecting others, living by a tough code of honor. In the movies, we cheered for him, because we knew that his character would be the one to lead the troops or the wagon train or the cattle drive to victory. He wouldn’t lallygag or falter and worry or ponder—he would take decisive action. He’d done it before. He’d paid his dues. He’d be a seasoned, self-assured, tough cowboy, and wouldn’t ever dilly-dally with non-productive small talk. “We’re burnin’ daylight!” We’d always want him on our side, much more than the whiners and the soft intellectuals. When it comes to my survival, I’d trust John Wayne’s judgment over Tom Hanks or Sean Penn or Alec Baldwin or Tom Cruise any day.
Fictional or not, I always believed John Wayne the man / John Wayne’s film character were one and the same, and he would always choose the right course of swift, unvarnished action. A “man’s man,” a man of honor.
I’ve wondered this week what The Duke’s take on David Letterman’s twisted joke about the sexual assault of Palin’s young daughter would be. Wayne would have likely cleaned his clock, would have chewed Letterman up, would have eaten him for breakfast… followed maybe by a beer and a belch.
The Duke would have called him any and all names vile enough and colorful enough to get his message across about what a worm he thought Letterman was (Wayne could cuss better than most). He would have planted himself front and center of news cameras, loudly denouncing Letterman and all the other silent cowards in the entertainment industry, who through their silence condone such hateful, perverted behavior against the child of a Republican politician. Wayne would have sneered at the prissy Hollywood elite for being woosies and hypocrites.
Wayne had no patience with whiny, sniveling left-wingers, those who didn’t appreciate his cherished country and treated people, especially women and children, deplorably. Wayne didn’t usually start fights, but he never backed down from them, either. America and patriots were always worth defending to him. He would have been entranced by Sarah Palin, I’m sure. Impressed by her grit, guts, and love of country. Impressed by how she handles criticism, conducts herself with optimism and grace, despite being viciously attacked by rabid liberals and the media more than any other human being on the face of the earth. Wayne could be loud, blustery, offensive, chauvinistic to a fault. He was far from perfect. But he respected and admired grit and guts… Palin has proven she has those qualities time and time again. He would have loved Sarah.
Americans would have applauded and cheered when The Duke demanded honor, demanded civility, demanded truth, and then trounced the perverted, bitter, scummy Letterman and his nasty, statist cronies for their bitter, scummy attempts to dismantle what is good in America. Like Sarah Palin and other targeted patriots.
I wonder how quiet or supportive Wayne would have been about the socialist direction our country is being forced down by Obama? How enamored he would be with Obama’s redistribution of wealth, his apologies to the world about America?
Whoa, boy… hearing or seeing THAT tirade would be worth its weight in Treasury bonds… LOL. Wayne never put up with crap, never held back on his opinion, and while he angered politicians in Washington, he was adored by millions. He was real. He was honest.
He was John Wayne, dammit.
Excellent essay by Mary Claire Kendall on Big Hollywood, paying homage to Wayne and Ronald Reagan, who were great friends (why is that not at all surprising?) Here is the opening; recommend you read it in its entirety: Seeing the Duke in a Whole New Light:
For navel-gazing Republicans, in the throes of a full-blown identity crisis, the 30th anniversary of John “Duke” Wayne’s passing this June 11th, couldn’t come sooner, reminding us of what it was like when giants were in our midst.
The Duke, still ranked Americans’ all-time favorite film star, whose popularity only increases with time, was an “extremely close friend” of Ronald Reagan, said their close mutual friend, longtime Paramount Executive, A.C. Lyles.
Thirty years ago. Wow, that’s beyond a generation. My son, who is 16, loved to watch our DVD of The Cowboys when he was a little guy. Over and over again he’d watch this longer-than-normal film. And over and over again, he cried when John Wayne’s character was killed. Now, nearly a decade later, Wayne is still one of his favorite actors, even though he died long before my son was born.
Glitz and glamor overshadowed again by substance and grit. Here are some John Wayne tribute videos to honor a great man, a great American. Wish there were more like him. Even if you’ve seen them before, watch them again. In this Age of Obama, you’d be surprised how refreshing it now is to hear someone express patriotism and love rather than decry, backstab, and bash America.
John Wayne: “America, Why I Love Her”
John Wayne, He’s America | By Clyde Lucas
Related reading on John Wayne, the vileness of Letterman, the left-wing hate of Contessa Brewer:
John Nolte, Big Hollywood: ‘Progressive’ Hollywood Fails Women Where Old Studio System Did Not and Top Ten Possible Letterman Reactions to Fallout Over Willow Palin Rape ‘Joke’ and ‘John Wayne is the United States of America’
My View: The Gary Cooper type
Living in Cinema: 30 Years Ago Tomorrow: John Wayne
NRO Symposium: Long Live The Duke – John Wayne: Gone for 30 years, and still with us.
Barking Moonbat Early Warning System: Missed it, miss him
Hot Air: Video: Palin on Today and Oh my: NOW inducts Letterman into its “Media Hall of Shame” and Video: Letterman non-apologizes to Palin; Update: McCain scolds Letterman and Video: Ziegler gets his mike cut off by MS-NBC and Video: Letterman doubles down, makes prostitute joke about Palin’s daughter; Update: Both Palins rip Letterman and Letterman: When I joked about Palin’s daughter having sex, I meant Bristol, not Willow and Letterman Top Ten: Palin has a “slutty flight attendant look”; Audio: “Pathetic,” says Palin
PajamasMedia: I am afraid I no longer believe…That we have an inquisitive American media as we once knew it
GayPatriot: Why Aren’t Feminists Upset With David Letterman?
Greg Gutfeld, Daily Gut: Letterman’s Obsession with Sarah Palin
Hot Air, Green Room: It Might Not Be the Best Idea for David Letterman to Joke About Underage Girls Being Raped
The ConservativeXpress: John Ziegler Destroys Contessa Brewer About The Letterman/Palin Controversy (Video)
Gateway Pundit: NY Times Airbrushes Letterman’s Willow Palin Sex Jokes From Their Website
ButAsForMe: “Cut the Mike” — Steamed Contessa Brewer Says After Palin Defender John Ziegler Destroys Her Arguments and ‘Pathetic’: Sarah Palin Responds to Letterman ‘Slutty’ Joke; Talks About the Media’s Bogus Plagiarism Claim, Failure of Socialism, Sotomayor and Contessa Brewer Calls Carrie Prejean A ‘Hater’ and Contessa Brewer: Republicans ‘Think Americans Are a Bunch of Idiots’
Kerfuffles and Flourishes: David Letterman Jokes about Child Rape
Lighthouse on the Right: Army Strong
I Hate The Media!: MSNBC’s whorish Contessa Brewer can’t understand why Sarah Palin took offense to being called slutty
Michelle Malkin: David Letterman’s latest publicity stunt: You’re the Taliban and David Letterman: Perv and Why they hate us and Letterman to Palin: Now that I’ve trashed your family, come on my show! and Media Malpractice: The documentary and “Liberal sexist pigs”
Media Lizzy & Friends: Playboy, Rape and Grim Fairy Tales
Dummies’ Guide to Dummies Of The Year: Jackass David Letterman Is Nominated Dummies Of The Year
Moralia: Because hot conservative women have to stick together
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Letterman Is Scum, NBC Contessa Brewer Meltdown: Angry That John Ziegler Said Positive Things about Sarah Palin and No Hate Here at Playboy, Guys… Just Some Good Ol’, Fun-Lovin’ Power-Rape of Conservative Women and Bravo, Elisabeth… Elisabeth Hasselbeck Goes After Playboy for Disgusting ‘Hate-Rape of Top 10 Conservative Women’ Article (video)
Josh Painter, RedState: David Lecherman’s weasel excuse not accepted – Gov Palin was right – even his excuse is pathetic.
MoFo Politics: Video: Contessa Brewer vs. John Ziegler on Palin-Letterman Controversy
Moe Lane: Caleb covers the first step in the Letterman dance…
Expedite Trucking Forums: David Letterman – Prince of Late Night Cowardice
Federal Way Conservative: They Hate All that is Good, Beautiful
True North: David Letterman: Another “Have You No Decency?” Moment
Ernie Mannix, Big Hollywood: The Ghost of Johnny Carson
Blatherings Blog: Sarah Palin – Matt Lauer Today Interview
Newsday.com: David Letterman defends Sarah Palin joke
FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog: NBC’s Early Today Bags on Sarah Palin for Calling David Letterman Pathetic As Letterman Calls Palin’s Daughter a Prostitute
threedonia.com: David Letterman: Man of Wealth and Taste
City-Data Forum: David Letterman – Jokes about Alex Rodriguez raping Willow Palin
Change Barack!: Letterman Jokes About the Rape of a 14-year-old Girl
Rosita the Prole: Malkin Nails Letterman. Hillbuzz Nails CBS Advertisers. Hanson Defends the Maidens.
Right Minded Online: And the beat goes on…MTV trashes the Palin family, America, Bush, Christians, etc.
Stage Right, Big Hollywood: Broadway Rejects Conservative Plays
About the author
Thank you for the trackback.
You’re welcome… good post about Letterman, had to “share the knowledge.”
True Grit has always been my favorite John Wayne movie.
He was always what he was, and the hell with what you think he should be.
I admire that.
If your son hasn’t seen True Grit, I would recommend it.
Great Post.
John would have been with us, and against the current government takeover.
I love True Grit, AFVET. I didn’t let my son watch it when he was young because of the language, but now that he’s 16, I’m sure he has heard worse in the school hallways. LOL
One of my favorites of The Duke’s, though, is The Quiet Man. Amazing actors, story, and breath-taking cinematography. And the donnybrook at the end is classic!
If he likes John Wayne, he’ll love True Grit,
yeah he’s heard worse than that, the end of the movie is what life is about.
I’ll never forget it.
John Wayne, like many icons, was something many people projected their own thoughts and wishes on. He was larger than life on the screen. He was a somewhat flawed man in real life (as are we all.) His wife and close friends say he was eternally conflicted by his warrior persona on the screen and the fact that he opted out of service in WWII. (Although as a man in his 30s with three kids, his deferment was no shame.)
However, the one thing I’ve always heard from people who actually met him — whether kids who asked for autographs, people who worked on his film set or even colleagues that he helped get blacklisted in the McCarthy Era — was that he was a decent, honorable man. I guess that’s why most Liberals overlook where our politics differ from his, yet can admire him for the qualities he had and the great contribution he made to American film and the American Mythos.
As to what he would say to Obama? Well, I’m not sure he’d be parading up and down spewing Limbaugh-esque invective. Remember his famous pronouncement on Kennedy? “I didn’t vote for the man. But he’s my President and I wish him well.” Wayne was enough of an American that he would have deplored divisiveness.
For a Liberal’s spin on The Duke (actually sans politics), you can read my tribute to him:
http://leftcoastcowboys.com/2009/06/10/remembering-the-duke-pilgrim/
Barney Frank OK with you ?
AFVET:
For John Wayne to eat Barney for breakfast, like the title of this post has him ‘eating Letterman for breaking’? LOL… OK, sure. That vile man has plenty of fat, kinda like bacon. Could be mighty tasty with a side of eggs and toast.
Not that I’m advocating cannibalism, mind you… IT IS A JOKE. (must add that disclaimer because liberals might think I was serious about Frank being killed and eaten for breakfast by Wayne (no gay jokes here – “eaten” in the usual, “take in food for sustenance and survival” type of “eaten”) Although, Letterman said he wasn’t serious about his Willow Palin joke (so he says, the scum, and naturally all liberals are OK with his vile joke now) – I need to hold myself up to the same level of character, non-partisan fairness and good conduct as he does. /sarcastic
Oh please… John would have just shot him.
Not sure what Barney Frank has to do with it. Odd that you would be so antagonistic to someone who is basically on the same page with you that The Duke was someone to be admired even if the man could never live up to all the projections we tend to place on icons. However, no one can say how he would have reacted to today’s politicians. Although I’d believe that his gracious response to Kennedy, even though Wayne had campaigned tirelessly for Nixon, was an indication that he would have kept the vitriol out of it.
Oh and for the record, I don’t know anyone — in San Francisco yet — who’s not appalled by David Letterman. Most of us are voting with the remote. It’s sort of a shame Sarah Palin put this thing on the front pages with her response — although you can certainly see how a mother would respond this way about a slur on her child. But even with the slight ratings boost Letterman’s had recently with Leno’s retirement, I think very few people were actually tuning in to hear it.
Sometimes when you engage these types of people, you just give them more airtime.
Sorry, Lisa – AFVET and I were carrying on a little joke and forgot we had a cyber audience… Barney Frank has NOTHING to do with John Wayne (he and I were referring to another post I put up today, a video with Barney Frank having a hissy fit). *grinning sheepishly*
My bad…
Thank you for that input about folks in San Francisco being disgusted by Letterman. I would like to think outrage over this would be a natural human thing, not a demographic thing, but who am I kidding? Thank you for your post. Hope to see you back!
Well, we can be united in admiration for The Duke. Which is a good thing.
Actually, I find most people are not that different and have fundamentally the same innate sense of decency.
What becomes tricky in our oversaturated media age is something like the Letterman “joke” or the blogger who dusted up this whole “Trig is not Sarah Palin’s baby” thing. On one hand, the average person would be inclined to shout “shame on you”. But when the perpetrator is on a little watched late night show or a blog, well, if you dignify it with your outrage, don’t you just call more attention to it?
Therefore, I don’t think there is a “lack of outrage”. I think, with some of these strange personal attacks, there’s the problem of knowing how to stop it without actually fanning the flames when the whole thing could go viral on YouTube, Facebook or whatever.
Excellent points, Lisa. And I think John Wayne would have gotten a real kick out of making mincemeat out of Letterman for his nasty stunt against Palin’s daughter.
I think if conservatives continue to be silent, though, we permit the bullying to continue and escalate. Why shouldn’t it, if the liberal media and Hollywood elites are giggling and conservatives do nothing to stop the ongoing bashing of conservative women (power-rape is OK, per Playboy), conservative values, conservative families?
Passivity and taking the high road is not working. Turning the other cheek is a commendable course of action until you run out of cheeks. Then, it’s fight or flight. Sarah has not said much of anything about the nonstop attacks against her these many months – truly classy, but it wasn’t stopping – not even slowing down. I admire her strength – I would have crumbled long before now, being called a slut, a whore, a bimbo, trailer trash – having one hateful liberal comedian after another (Sandra Bernhard, Wanda Sykes, Janeane Garofalo, Roseanne, Rosie O’Donnell, Joy Behar, etc.) attacking everything I stand for and making up tons of lies all in the name of “comedy.” Ignoring my accomplishments as an elected official of state government. What she has done with Alaska’s economy is remarkable – compare it to California, New York’s, nearly any other state’s. But they attack her pro-life stance, her Christianity, her values. When it was announced that she would be McCain’s running mate, 30 attorneys were sent by Obama to Wasilla to dig up dirt on her. Nothing was found. But the slams and smears have continued.
Then Letterman crossed the line attacking Sarah’s children on national TV, and I think she snapped. Heck – I would have, too. My husband said if that had been our daughter, Letterman would be creamed.
I think Sarah has decided to fight for her children and to fight against a growing tyranny in America. Letterman deserves what he gets. Giving it more attention is actually waking up a lot of people to the intolerance the liberal media has for conservatives. I think it’s time to stand up for ourselves. Tell them the hateful, perverted warrantless attacks STOP NOW.
One more point: Bill Maher is not a little known blogger, nor is Andrew Sullivan of the Colbert Report and writer for Atlantic Monthly. Both these Palin-hating men are STILL fanning the flames that Sarah did not give birth to Trig and he is Bristol’s baby (of course, in so doing, they both choose to ignore the required 9-month gestation period of a baby, and Bristol would have had to jump through hoops that defy scientific probability to give birth to both Trig and Tripp – if I’m wrong about them still doing this, my bad). Neither Maher or Sullivan have changed their stance (making them look foolish and a bit insane) nor apologized. I think Maher will go thrashing and kicking to his grave before admitting he was wrong and continued to perpetuate the lie, LOL
As far as giving Letterman his “just desserts,” boycott of sponsors’ products is very effective. Since he owns Worldwide Pants, I don’t think he can be fired (I could be wrong). So, we can all work together to make the viability of his business dry up. Notify sponsors that you will boycott their products. In this economic atmosphere, I think that will have a great deal of impact. And if the ratings of his show drop (I stopped watching years ago, back when he started being bitter), so be it. Karma can be a real bear, eh?
Thanks for your input – your concerns about oversaturated media have a great deal of merit. I’m going to ruminate on them…
If you really look carefully, you’ll see that personal attacks are not being levied solely at conservatives. Hillary has been the brunt of incredible vitriol, not about her politics, but because of her looks, clothes, etc. And read a few of the conservative blogs out there on Michelle Obama and see what really frightening misogynist stuff is printed about her, again, not about policy (although she’s not an elected official) but about her hair, clothes, body type, etc. Smears have been going on long before the Bush machine smeared McCain, or Nixon smeared Helen Gahan Douglas, or even before his opponents smeared Thomas Jefferson with the Sally Hemings story.
But now we live in an era of snarling dogpack media, all of it, blogs, newspapers, TV and on both ends of the political spectrum. Again, I’m not sure if there is an immediate answer except in the language media understands, the language of the remote and the withdrawn consumer dollar.
I’ve just said we can’t speculate on what The Duke would do, but now I’m going to do just that. Given that he had a wide network of friends in the industry, and he had a strong feeling about presenting good models for kids, I think he would have worked behind the scenes to get the A-List of his friends to boycott the Letterman show. Without the good guests, a talk show withers and dies.
It wouldn’t have been an instant solution. But again, it’s so difficult to figure out an anti-smear strategy without just pouring gasoline on the whole thing. The more you protest, the more you keep the smear front and center.
I disagree that Bill Maher or Andrew Sullivan hold much sway. People’s time is so much more fractured between news and entertainment outfits since the days of the big three networks. Nobody seems to command a sizeable marjority of the nations ears. And we are all so bombarded with stuff from every quarter, I don’t think half of it sticks.
I tend to think, if no one had dignified Andrew Sullivan’s claims, it would have faded to a far corner of the tin-foil had brigade. And you are never going to set the record straight with those people.