Lew, assuming that you watched Bat Masterson episodes when they were new, you should be forgiven for your affininty for them. We'll call it youthful indescretion. Heck, I used to be a big fan of George Patton (as played by George C Scott) when I was in junior high. I didn't realize at the time that Scott was trying to make him look like a nut. I'm all growed up now, though.
As Chales Featherstone once pointed out to me, the problem is less the ridiculous Westerns of that era, and more the fact that people used to take them seriously. I would go farther and say that the problem was not the popular art of that era - it was the people; People foolish enough to believe that Bert the Turtle and bomb shelters were a reasonable strategy to help "win" a nuclear war.
For some, the rhetoric of the time still endures. I saw recently that Pat Buchanan is still using the maudlin phrase "the winning of the west." Well, if one considers the below to be a "winning" of some kind, then I'll have to object:
1. massive expansion and militarization of the federal government.
2. giving the federal government direct control of millions of acres of land (it's no coincidence that the feds now directly control 50% of all territory in Western states.
3. massive acceleration of corporatist structures through "public private partnerships" allowing government "friends" like railroads and big ranchers to steal untold numbers of acres from private citizens.
4. the glorification of Unionist confederate-butchering fools like Phil Sheridan who declared that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian"
5. the shedding of rivers of blood by both white men and indians.
Such things might be considered a victory for some, but I suppose we can't expect much more than that from a generation that thought that the Beatles' haircuts were outrageous.
