50 years ago, Mel Brooks’ premiered his masterpiece Western, Blazing Saddles. It is a movie that could never be made in today’s era of wokeness, but the magic of the movie was that it didn’t offend anybody, specifically because the movie found a way to offend and mock everybody.
Legendary character actor Slim Pickens played Mr. Taggers, who would lead a hired posse of thugs to lay siege to the township of Rock Ridge, sitting in the path of the coming expansion of the rail line. All of the residents of Rock Ridge (all named Johnson), fabricated a two-dimensional decoy town, complete with cut-outs of themselves. As the posse pounced and seized their way through the false Rock Ridge, Pickens realizes the switcheroo and yells out, “It’s a fake. We’ve been suckered in.” If he were alive and working today, Pickens’ character would be a staff writer for Newsweek or the New York…
