Pretty Boy Floyd
Because they were showing Blow again tonight at the VoKi, and out of awe for the man Johnny Depp quoted in that film, Woody Guthrie, I thought I would submit a few stanzas from The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd. This is my favorite part:
It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.
There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger (language),
An’ his wife she overheard.
Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.
The rest of the text is available at the link above.
I can’t claim to say I really know anything about Floyd other than two things:
1) He wasn’t that pretty. At least, he wasn’t Johnny Depp pretty. And Johnny Depp is awful pretty.
2) He was a man at odds with his time.
I’ll not go on with point 1 about how objectively pretty Johnny Depp is; point 2 is the fulcrum of the legend.
While Floyd’s name is oft tossed in with the likes of your roaring-twenties villains–Al Capone, Dillenger, Machine Gun Kelly, Babyface– he was chronologically and geographically far removed from that whole group. He was already long cold and dead before any of those cats started up.
Floyd really belongs along side with names like Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy. Yet, he was decades too late for that either. He was an outlaw who had the misfortune of being born too late. His was a time of newfangled horseless carriages and telephones. Were it not for such inventions, he might never have been caught.
The real question on everyone’s lips is whether Floyd was truly a villain, or was he a Robin Hood.
This blog is not qualified to even begin to delve into that issue.
However, this blog does at least have the cajones to wonder. Guthrie, like others, elevated Floyd to hero status. This follows suit with a long line of outlaws as heroes; the most obvious example being Robin Hood. William Tell, although not a robber, also fits nicely into that pocket. Yet these figures are time removed, safe, dehumanized icons.
If only we had a modern day paradigm we compare these with…
At the risk of sounding banal, I submit the name Osama bin Laden. Also known as the Tall Rider, who allegedly saw to the murder of three thousand innocents of humans of every color, faith and nationality. Yet it was well documented four years ago that his was a name oft chosen in some regions as a namesake for countless newborns in 2002.
Who are these proud parents? What could compel them to name that which is most precious in their lives, a newborn babe, after one who undertook such wanton bloodshed? Could it be a question of perspective?
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
Yes, damnable perspective. Any intelligent person on the street should be able to see that almost any “evil” act is the result of a legitimate beef. Yet those who compose and construct our daily dose of conventional wisdom will invariably take the paths of least resistance: They are evil; They hate our freedom ™; We have a right to defend ourselves. Nevermind that a young man resorted to killing himself in order to kill a few others; this is about self defence.
Where are the leaders who have the balls to look into the lives that to such extremes oppose them and see them as humans? When will we ever have the maturity and courage to walk that truly dangerous path, to show our hand, to admit mistakes, to be forthcoming and devoid of concocted altruisms?