Arizona Politics

Two nights ago, I went to a rodeo. (Shh, don’t tell Dr. Deb, she’d probably fire me for supporting cruelty to animals and all that leather.) There were two major things I learned: 1) Never become a real cowboy/girl so as to hope to live past 30, and 2) do not say anything too loudly about being liberal.
First lesson number one: being a cowboy is practically the most dangerous thing ever. These guys, for a living, get on a horse or giant bull that has never been trained and pretty much hates people, piss it off with their spurs just a little more, and then try and spend 8 seconds on a thing that is bucking it’s legs and back about six feet high in the air atleast. Oh yeah, and then get out of the way if they are thrown, or get off, if they make it for the full 8 seconds.
Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard of cowboys before. But after spending days with fairly tame horses in pens, and having been simply stepped on by a flighty one who we were trying to treat and getting a big black toe, umm, the whole thing becomes a little more real; horses are huge...
One guy stayed on this insane horse for 8 seconds, and then when the guys on horses trained to rescue them came for him, the bucking horse just took off. Three seconds later, he’d bucked up against a fence, throwing the guy into and over it. He got up…it took a while. Then there was the bronco who threw his guy over his head and then jumped over and around him. Somehow the guy’s head wasn’t squashed in, either, but hey, half an inch closer and the guy would have been dead. Good thing the horses don’t want to trip themselves up on the bundle of idiot flailing around beneath them, or those guys wouldn’t have had a chance. The meaner bulls, on the other hand, took off after their riders, apparently holding it against them for trying to get on their back, hold onto a strap that’s squeezing the animal’s testicles, and stay there for a while. There were 18 year olds who looked like they’d probably walk hunched over by the time they were 30. Keep in mind not everyone was so concerned. As I gasped and groaned and covered my eyes, the three little girls in front of me turned around and laughed at me every time. Okay, so, fine. I also can't watch scary movies. But like, people legit die during these things! I mean, I'm assuming they do, I guess cause my thinking is, umm, how could they not? And then my co-worker Rory was like, “Oh, so sweet, I’m totally gonna try riding one of those bareback sometime.”
Okay Rory. Have fun with that…

Lesson number two:
This was given when, to create a diversion, the announcer started making idle chitchat.
“Who’s a Hillary Clinton fan in here?” he asked. There was silence. Not that the crowd was interacting much in general, so we from the ranch just looked at each other and snickered. Then it got serious.
“Who likes Osama’s cousin, Obama?”
Now the crowd started to boo. Umm, what? Did that actually just happen?
And then: “Who likes McCain?”
Crowd goes wild cheering.
“Yeah! Because who loves freedom?”
More cheers.
We stood our ground with a few half-hearted boos…but then we sort skipped to raising our eyebrows…because, umm, yikes. Way too many large strong rednecked people that it is really NOT a good idea to piss off…
So I learned--Liberalism off of Circle L Ranch is apparently not something you should promote?