Pull on your shit kickers, the Olympic rodeo is coming.For a minute there, it looked as though the Salt Lake (Olympic) Organizing Committee might sever ties with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), with which it contracted to put on a rodeo for our Cultural Olympiad. But that was really only a pipe dream helped along by our well-meaning mayor.
It might be ironic, but a footnote is appropriate here to call attention to the latest issue of the glossy Salt Lake Magazine. Gracing its cover is our boy Rocky in a cowboy suit. This is no B.S. The mayor, sporting a Stetson and carrying a saddle, strikes a Marlboro man pose-and dang if he ain’t handsome. Parenthetically, he refused to pull on the chaps for the photo shoot. We don’t know why. We’re told he looks real hunky in chaps.
Anyway, Mitt Romney was looking for a graceful break with the PRCA because animal rights activists have been following the Olympic torch around the country with ugly pictures complaining that rodeo is cruel to calves, broncs and bulls. To say nothing of rodeo clowns. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said they’d cancel the protests and others set for Salt Lake City, if SLOC would buck the PRCA.
But when Mitt huddled with his crack Olympic legal team—you know, the ones that have been going around suing the chaps off anyone and everyone—he had to embrace the cowboy way. SLOC is bound by a contract. So, PETA and the Utah Animal Rights Coalition have promised to do their own wrangling during the Winter Games. Let’s rodeo!
Deseret News columnist and protector of the status quo Lee Benson doesn’t cotton to rodeo protestors. You remember Lee, he’s the one who earlier criticized the group Save Our Canyons for protesting a proposed 10,000-square-foot convention center on the top of Hidden Peak at Snowbird. “It’s only a canyon,” he bleated. This time it’s PETA and UARC he’s calling wimps because they weren’t at Oakley’s July 4th Rodeo, protesting where they might get beat up by real cowboys.
Lee, as you’ve probably guessed, is pretty tough from his office high in the ivory tower of the Deseret News.
Now it’s back to the original problem for those cowardly protestors at UARC and PETA—how to get a permit for a legal protest during the Olympics. Although they applied under Salt Lake City ordinances in March for legal demonstrations during the Games, the city still hasn’t issued the permits. But our Marlboro man mayor insists there is no boot dragging.
And finally this: We got a nice call from said mayor here at SmartBomb the other day. He was responding to our claim that he has yet to synchronize traffic signals downtown, as he promised during his campaign two years ago. Wrong!%#$!, he insists. He has synchronized them. They are synchronized. Haven’t you noticed? It’s more complicated than you think. OK. Sure. Fine. If you say so, Rocky.
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