Horse 2239 - And The Horse You Rode In On

Regular readers will know about my ongoing war with the overuse of the word "awesome"; especially when the thing that they are describing doesn't fill them with awe. I think that when you cheapen the word, it leaves you with no room to go when a thing which actually fills you with awe. This week however, I read something in the newspaper (that foldy dead tree thing with printed words in, which prints news, opinions and editorialising dressed up as news) which if it didn't fill me with awe, made me cheer at the very least.

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/02/518152247/new-interior-secretary-rides-a-horse-to-first-day-on-the-job
Newly minted Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke knows how to make an entrance: He arrived at his first day of work in Washington on the back of a horse named Tonto.
Zinke rode the horse — a bay roan gelding just over 17 hands tall — less than a mile, from the National Park Service's stables on the National Mall to the Department of the Interior.
- NPR, 2nd Mar 2017.

From The Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4275608/New-Interior-secy-ponies-work-day-office.html

Let me just reiterate that. Ryan Zinke, the new Secretary Of The Interior of the United States, rode to work on a horse. Many times in this train wreck of the Trump administration, I have thought that the appointments have either been totally out of their depth or completely unqualified for the positions to which they have been installed (despite whatever experience that they may have had in business) and whilst it is true that I have no idea how qualified Ryan Zinke is for the job he's found himself in, if nothing the fact that he's ridden to work on a horse, says that he's understood both the gravitas and the spirit of the job.

He might "accidentally the whole thing" in this job but not since the days of Teddy Roosevelt have we seen the likes of alligators and snakes in Washington DC. Roosevelt though was something of a maniac, who used to ride regularly through the nation's capital, jumping over things like ditches and walls; he even cancelled a Cabinet meeting once, just so he could be photographed on his horse, jumping a fence.

If everyone truly wanted to look the part, the Secretary Of Defense would always be in uniform, the Secretary Of The Treasury would wear a bowler hat and have a cigar, the Secretary Of Transportation would have a striped railway engineer's hat, and of course the Secretary Of The Interior would ride to work on a horse. How could they not? The only thing that would be more 'Murican would be Abraham Lincoln riding a bear, fighting space Nazis with a machine gun; holding the US Constitution, on the moon.

I don't care if Ryan Zinke is terrible at the job and gets fired within a fortnight. As Secretary Of The Interior, he's ridden to work on a horse and that's genuinely awesome. Yeah!