Why Westerns matter

I offer this from the Huffington post, not as a political comment, but as another example of how genre iconography can reach way beyond the films themselves (and yes, some stars, like Wayne or Karloff, became so associated with a genre that they became part of the semantics):

Casting: the One Word that Explains Hollywood's Embrace of Obama

Ever since the news broke that, much to the consternation of Team Hillary, some of Hollywood's major players -- including David Geffen, Jeffery Katzenberg, and Ari Emanuel -- were throwing their support behind Barack Obama, I've been asked the same question again and again: Why?

It's not "Why?" as in, "Why in the world would they want to do that?" Obama's appeal is too obvious for that.
The question is more an attempt to understand the intensity of Hollywood's embrace of his candidacy, despite many long and pre-existing loyalties to other candidates. ...
Sure, Obama is young, brilliant, handsome, charismatic ... and, yes, Sen. Biden, "clean as a whistle." But the reason why Hollywood has gone ga-ga for Obama can be summed up in one word: "Casting."...
As much as we may not want to admit it -- as much as we may wish that politics was about policies and the perfect health care plan -- the truth is unavoidable: casting matters. It matters very much....
For a long time now, America has been besotted with the idea of President as Macho Cowboy. Think John Wayne. Or Ronald Reagan epitomizing the John Wayne archetype. The tough-talking, straight-shooting, no-crap-taking role model has captured the public's fancy -- especially in a post-9/11 world.

It's one of the reasons Bush was able to win reelection despite all the massive failures of his first term. He was seen as a brush-clearing, pick-up-driving, big-belt-buckle-wearing, terrorist-ass-kicking kind of guy. The sort of fellow you could have a beer with, as opposed to John Kerry's equivocating, wind-surfing, Chardonnay-drinking persona.

But after 6 years of Bush's all-hat-no-cattle leadership, the American public seems ready to abandon the John Wayne fantasy. The question is: to be replaced by what?

A Jimmy Stewart-style Everyman? An honest-as-the-day-is-long Gary Cooper type? A Gregory Peck-does-Atticus Finch moralist?"

With that last question, I wonder if Huffington isn't actually moving from semantics to syntax -- fighting out the struggle between outlaw and classic hero that we saw in Casablanca and the Man who Shot liberty Valance. Her full post can be read here.