(HOST) Commentator, teacher and film producer Jay Craven has been amused by the political revival of a word that reminds him of an old TV show, a personal friend, and the truth – you might say – about legends.
(CRAVEN) I’ve been fascinated by Presidential politics ever since the first grade when a classmate taught me a pro-Eisenhower ditty as we waited in the rain at our school bus stop. As I recall, it was pretty unkind to Adlai Stevenson.
This year I took Marlboro College freshmen to the Montreal Film Festival and caught the Democratic convention between screenings. During the Republican confab, I was working in Burlington and staying in a spare room at my friend Robin Lloyd’s apartment.
On John McCain’s big night, I happened to arrive back at her place just in time for the speeches including McCain’s, in which the word "maverick" was everywhere. Delegate after delegate called McCain and Palin "mavericks".
I looked at Robin – because I knew that Samuel Maverick, the Texan who inspired the term, was her great great grandfather. Legend has it that Maverick refused to brand his calves as a humanitarian gesture.
Robin looked at me. "The ‘mavericks’ were the little stray cows running all over the open range," she said. "Not my great great granddad."
Now other candidates want in. A New Jersey Republican called himself ‘Maverick Maury’ in his longshot Senate bid. He bet campaign cash at the race track and offered a thousand bucks to anyone who could videotape his opponent in an embarrassing situation.
And I remember the old Maverick TV show, where card shark Bret Maverick helped out the forces of justice – as long as there was some money in it. When real trouble arrived, he’d slip out the backdoor to avoid a fight.
Prompted by the now ubiquitous use of her family name, Robin Lloyd wrote a recent letter to the New York Times. In it, she objected to the – quote – "misappropriation" of the maverick name by candidates she feels fail to meet the standard of people – quote – "who don’t run with the herd."
Robin thinks the term fits her grandmother her grandmother, Lola Maverick – quote – "a feminist rebel and pacifist who crossed the Atlantic with 47 other women in 1915 in an effort to end World War I." I think it fits Robin herself, who’s spent her life working for peace and justice.
But just as Robin was rising to defend the family name family name, a note arrived from her brother:
"S. A. Maverick was a lawyer and land speculator, NOT a rancher," he said; "which helps explain why he couldn’t be bothered to brand his cattle, which he acquired in lieu of attorney’s fees. A slave was put in charge of the cattle, but he apparently didn’t get the proper guidance from his master, so the cattle remained unbranded, and came to be known in that part of Texas as ‘mavericks’."
And THAT reminds me of the newspaper editor in John Ford’s film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." When he’s told that the truth about the story’s shooting differs from the myth, he just nods and says, "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."