As of recently, in 2024, it’s true. I had never watched Yellowstone or any of the spinoff shows featured on Paramount Plus but has now been moved onto the Peacock streaming services and NBC as a primetime option. Yellowstone is one of our current time’s most popular television shows, and I was curious about it. But my wife and I have not had the time to watch it. From what I saw of Kevin Costner, who is one of the stars, is that he’s too lefty for me. And with Taylor Sheridan being a Hollywood actor, I wasn’t interested in watching those types of people make a modern western. So I put it on hold. After watching it recently and catching up on many of the shows and spinoffs, especially the Western series 1883, 1923, and Bass Reeves, I can say that there are liberalisms in them I don’t like at all, such as language and sex. The families are too dysfunctional even though they crave not to be, which naturally comes from the messed up minds of Democrats, who then grow up to be actors, writers, and directors. One thing that turned me off was that during the production of the show a few years ago, while Yellowstone was at its height of power, as everyone knew what kind of show it was at all levels of production, especially from financing, Kevin Costner showed support for Liz Cheney over President Trump. So I blew off the whole effort as just another work by a bunch of lefty Hollywood types and did other things. However, so many people have been talking to me about it and wondering if I dressed the way I do because of the show, that I finally decided to catch up to everything. I can say that it is an excellent show. A lot is going on. But as a work of art, our culture is screaming out for attention and respect in so many exciting ways that I think Taylor Sheridan has stumbled onto something significant, and he can’t make enough shows fast enough to fill the need out there.
Uniquely, I travel a lot and often find myself on the other side of the world watching Asian television. And all through Europe, they love on television American westerns. It’s only in America these days that Westerners have been looked down on because there is a genuine Marxist push to destroy our culture, starting with the things we enjoy about it. But I’m not saying what I do about Westerns because it’s only a regional perspective. I’ve seen what the rest of the world does in art, entertainment, and literature. For instance, on television in Japan currently, there is a series called The Tale of Genji, a trendy book from Kyoto about a lady waiting during the 11th century. I watched some of it in my hotel rooms and what I could stream from referrals by friends. I enjoyed it enough to grab and read the book while traveling through airports on some of those long layovers. So when I say that Yellowstone is great, it’s within the context of the world, not just from an American perspective. Some significant themes are being explored in these Taylor Sheridan shows that are important to the perpetuation of the human race, and some real soul-searching is going on in them that can’t be overlooked. And I think they are just fantastic and reflect something I have considered since Joe Biden was put in office in 2021.
Westerns can save America, which I discuss in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. Classic American Westerns, whom I had been referring to, would do just fine if America had ever lost its way, which we are in an age where that has actually happened. I talk about often that after that horrendous election, my wife and I many times, sometimes with our entire family, packed up and traveled all over the Wild West to reacquaint ourselves with America because it was obviously under attack, and I needed to understand what the heck we were fighting for. I have a few souvenir cups I use around the house, one from Wall Drug out in South Dakota, one of my favorite places on earth, and another from The Big Texan, from Amarillo, Texas, and my grandkids like seeing them and thinking about their travels with us to those places. And maybe the Yellowstone show means more to us because we have been to the places where the show talks about, from the Yellowstone park itself to the vast areas of West Texas. I finished writing my book while on the road in Roswell, New Mexico, and we traveled a lot around West Texas while the rest of the country was on lockdown due to COVID-19. I also gained an appreciation for the backbone of America, especially when compared to my experience around the world. My opinions about these things didn’t just come out of nowhere but were formed from experience; by the way, Taylor Sheridan moved from Hollywood, bought a ranch in Texas, and started thinking about the contents of these television shows. His work is uniquely American and timely, and there is a genuine love in his work for the discussion. I wouldn’t say that these shows are making the MAGA movement for which President Trump is the spokesman. However, all of them spawn from the same concerns of American citizens, and these shows capture that sentiment perfectly. Probably unintentionally, but they are all part of a process of Americans working out what has happened to them over the last hundred years.
I watched a recent podcast with Joe Rogan and Taylor Sheridan talking about one of the spinoff shows, 1883, and how good it was. People forget a lot about why the West had to be won, and I think Taylor Sheridan is a lot more sympathetic to the American Indian than I am. But he tells good, honest stories about the natural history of the American West and how the American government wanted immigrants to populate Western expansion to fulfill the idea of Manifest Destiny. It’s interesting; most of the world was so oppressed by old-world rules and regulations that they would have done about anything for the prospect of free land in the vast spans of the American West. They didn’t always know they were going to have to fight Indians for that free land, but it says a lot about human beings that they were willing to fight just for the opportunity to be free of corrupt governments always in their daily lives, the kind of communism we see in Europe and Asia to this day, or the aristocratic kingdoms of that western expansion period. The story is not about how the Indians were killed for their land as much as it is about why people wanted to flee every corner of the world, and still do to this day, to get away from micromanaging governments and to have a chance to be free. At the core of the modern Taylor Sheridan westerns is the theme of all his shows, and the conflict that happens along the way is compelling and exciting to all human beings. But we are waking up to honesty about everything that always needed to happen and wasn’t talked about enough in previous westerns that are unique to these Taylor Sheridan projects, where they are coming from a Democrat perspective and migrating to a classic Republican platform politically. And I see a lot of hope for the future because of these creative efforts and the way people yearn for them with great fanfare. And they are certainly worth watching!
Rich Hoffman
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