Frontier Fraud

Monday night PBS broadcast a biography of Wyatt Earp on its American Experience
series. Its usually pretty good, but stumbled when it came to "The Frontier
Marshal"( the title of Stuart Lake's haliographic biography. Wyatt Earp was
never marshal of anything, least of all Tombstone. At the OK Corral execution,
he carried a badge that read "Special Police").

Alarm bells went off when I saw the Western "historian" and artist; Bob Boze
Bell was a commentator. His history is of the gee wiz school, and his art is on
the impressionistic side, bearing no resemblance to the work of Charles Russell
and David Powell.

This biography would have you believe Earp was an agent of modernity, bringing
the American West to a path to the 20th Century. He was, in fact, an agent for
prostitutes, a pimp, who lived off their earning and used their money for
gambling. Dealing cards was his idea of hard work.

When he needed money when the cards didn't fall his way, he'd find employment as
an assistant deputy marshal at $.50 an arrest. He always found a reason for an
arrest. In an addition to money, law enforcement allowed him to brutalize his
fellow man.

After the OK Corral execution he engaged in a life of killing. He murdered a
man named Frank Stillwell at the Tucson train yard. On his vengeance ride after
the murder of his brother, he is said to have killed upwards of thirty men.

Little of this was in the PBS documentary.

The Tombstone conflict could have been related in these terms:

The Clantions, McLaurys and the "Cowboys" (the name given the outlaw band that
terrorized the Tombstone area) were southern democrats with pro Confederate
views.

The Earps were badge heavy law and order, pro gun control Republicans who were
allergic to hard work.

The Cowboys didn't care to take orders from any Yankee son-a-bitches.

After Tombstone, Wyatt's life consisted of one get rich scheme after another,
although his common-law wife, Josie (or Sophie) came from a well to do family.
Her family, observant Jews living in San Francisco, didn't care for the
cold-blooded killer she had chosen as her life companion.

Josie was not mentioned until the last five minutes of the program, although she
was a witness to the OK Corral shooting.

Contrary to the commentators' story, Doc and the Earps were in dangered of being
lynched. They were arrested and tried for murder, but tried in a bench trial by
a judge with a pro Earp bias. He knew they were guilty, but apparently approved
of their actions.

Wyatt had a warrant for the murder of Frank Stillwell hanging over his head for
the rest of his life

The OK Corral incident did not bring law and order to Tombstone.

The American Experience needs warts and all biography, not what they gave their
Monday night.