December 7, 2005
My friend Allen Barra Emailed me this morning:
"American Heritage surprised me by putting the interview on the blog today. I thought they were going to edit it or something. Check it out at "

http://americanheritage.com/blog/200512_1_8.shtml

Lots of meetings with my editorial staff (Mark and Meghan) about expanding our features layouts. Bob Brink has complained, and I agree with him, that generally our cover stories just don’t have the punch they need. We backed up and totally re-attacked the new Hutton cover piece on "Why Is This Man Forgotten," to give it a stronger opening. Called Dan Harshberger and talked to him at length about what we want to accomplish. He was quite receptive to the challenge and I’m anxious to see what he comes up with. In the meantime, he pdf’d the cover layout up to me and it is quite strong.

After lunch I got this interesting Email from Marshall Trimble:
"I had a call last week from a New York producer for the Jon Stewart Show wanting me to be filmed out here in January for the big Gay Rodeo. They wanted me to be a 'conservative cowboy' and say gays have no business staging a rodeo because the sport is a rough and tumble real man's thing. I told them to find somebody else because gays have just as much right to put on a rodeo as anybody else. I reckon I missed my chance for 15 minutes of fame."
—Marsh

When I Emailed Marshall and asked him if I could run his comments in my blog he sent me this:

"Sure! I had the feeling they just wanted to have someone (me) get on camera
and make a fool of themselves and embarrass the entire cowboy community.
They were just looking for a schmuck. I don't care much for television and
their self-serving style anyway."
—Marsh

I admitted to Marshall I love the show but that I think he is totally correct on their intentions and if you've ever watched the show and asked yourself, "Oh, that poor schmuck, I’ll bet he wishes he hadn’t agreed to this interview," you know exactly what I mean.

"I’ve attained all the things everyone wants to attain, and I'm here to say, it doesn't mean shit."
—Madonna