Rodeos

Sedate Miles Simon writes: "I'm an old cowboy and rodeo contestant, and I guess I should have known this was coming from some WAISers sooner or later: cruelty to animals is charged. It's certainly nothing new, various groups have protested against rodeo for decades. But rodeo continues to grow in popularity, thus proving, I suppose, that the ignorant masses just have no sensibilities or culture."

This takes us to this message from Tim Brown: "Rodeo is my favorite sport. While I actually have nothing against bullfights, I prefer contest of skill in which the preordained name of the victor cannot be printed on a poster ten weeks in advance. The two are not moral equivalents. In a bull fight, the bull fighter and wins and the bull always dies, aberrant events aside. In a bull fight the deck is stacked in favor of the torrero and the outcome preordained. Essentially, bull fights produce hamburger the hard way.

By way of contrast. rodeo requires at least as much skill as bull fighting and is a series of fair contests based on real life cowboy experiences, roping, riding, taming of animals, in which the animal, not the human, has the advantage. I rodeod a little bit in high school, and my family is of western ranching origins [Nevada, Utah, California]. My views are based on personal experience. When I rode broncs, the horse always won; when I roped, the calf always escaped. And I didn't even dare try bull rifing or dally team roping, although wild cow milking was fun, and a good cutting horse competition still gives me an adrenaline rush. I still vividly remember the worst part of my short rodeoing career. After they had won, the broncs and calves would stand there laughing at me as I picked myself up out of the dirt. Bulls are more socially sensitive. They never laugh. They just try to gore you a time or two once you're on the ground. As to relative animal cruelty, rodeoing is an exercise in human, not animal, cruelty. The contests produces many, many human injuries and the animals never die. Further, the human contestants wears working clothes not a courtier's costume. Between the two, give me rodeo every time, and I'll bet that even the Miura bulls destined for the bull ring would agree with me, if only someone would ask them!"

My comment: I engage in one cruel sport in which I usually win, but with great difficulty: taming unWAIS editorial styles and reducing them to Times New Roman, black, medium.size. Well, it is not really my fault: the beasts attack me.

Ronald Hilton - 12/17/01