Going, going...

I never tire of watching it. I've watched it probably twenty times...or more. Even Glenn Campbell's awful performance fails to detract me when it comes to True Grit. With T.G. I've become something like Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory who is compelled to purchase copies of Catcher In The Rye: When TCM or AMC show True Grit, I have to watch...even if it's in the middle of the night...like last night. Though fighting to stay awake, at two a.m. I found myself chuckling at the fantastic exchange between Mattie and Col. G. Stonehill after Mattie had out haggled and brow beaten Stonehill.

Mattie: Do you know a Marshal Rooster Cogburn?
Col. G. Stonehill: Most people around here have heard of Rooster Cogburn and some people live to regret it. I would not be surprised to learn that he's a relative of yours.

There are too many great lines to recount. John Wayne was born to play Rooster Cogburn. Hell, he played him in one variation or another in nearly every movie he made. But Rooster is special. He operates out on the fringe. He's a rogue cop that gets results. He's out taking care of things we'd rather not entertain. It was his "grit" that attracted Mattie to him for the task of finding Tom Chaney.

Judge Parker he's an old carpetbagger, but he knows his rats! We had a good court going on here 'til them pettifogging lawyers moved in!

And it's the "grit" that keeps me up in the middle of the night watching; because I know that that kind of "grit" is fading away in America. The Rooster Cogburns of the world have become marginalized in the great metrosexual revolution. It's not much of a revelation to say that the American man ain't the man he used to be. And, even worse, he's been usurped by a kindler, gentler man; a man glued to gadgetry and the promise of a gravy train from womb to tomb. But there's a nagging thought in every yankee's mind: He knows he's a soft man, nestled in his air conditioned world, and he looks at himself and wonders if he could survive if either hell or high water came his way.

So, at the end of True Grit, as Rooster Cogburn, reins in teeth jumps Mattie's four rail fence, I calm myself with the thought that, come what may, I would eschew the modern man, that I would stare into the face of impending disaster, and with the help of God All Mighty, say, "fill your hands, you son of a bitch!

But for fewer and fewer of us, it is only a fantasy.