The Budget and the Battleborn Bonus

There’s nothing worse than having a good message, but garbling it up due to poor wording and bad facts. Case in point: the ongoing federal budget battle and the war of words between Senator Harry Reid and conservative commentators.

It started with Reid, who bragged, “The National Endowment for the Humanities is the reason we in Northern Nevada have, every January, the cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year, would not exist.”

Huh? They must have evaporated into thin air according to Harry.

Of course, that isn’t really what Reid meant when he was defending the Democrat’s funding of NEH. He was attempting to say — he made Elko’s National Cowboy Festival possible by getting organizers the needed money.

Reid failed to take into consideration those tens of thousands of people would have attended the festival, regardless of federal funding. Cowboy poetry is a very big deal to Nevadans, and I’ve had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with Nevada cowboy poet’s and the people who attend gatherings from all over the state.

The situation would probably gone unnoticed in Nevada — as much of what Harry says goes unnoticed — had it not been for the bombastic voicing of ridicule Mark Levin laid on the subject. His comments during his nightly radio rantings ticked a good many Northern Nevadan’s off and quickly.

“Is there a Broke Mountain up there?” Levin asked. “What kind of mountain range do they have up there, Mr. Producer? Brokeback Mountain — is that the name of the mountain in Northern Nevada there, where they have the cowboy poetry festival?”

Brokeback Mountain? Mark was referring to the 2005 movie and assuming everyone in Northern Nevada who enjoys the tradition of cowboy poetry is homosexual.

Not really — Levin was trying to make the point that the federal government shouldn’t be paying for the Elko festival. He later did manage to say exactly that, but the damage was already done.

From my point of view, they both screwed up. And while I’m used to the Senator’s mouthful of goofy words, I cannot condone Mr. Levin’s generalization of cowboy poets and the life-style that is springs from.

Besides it’s worth noting — the movie, “Brokeback Mountain,” is set in Wyoming — not Nevada.