Paul Thomas Richards
MULTI-MULTI-MILLIONAIRE LAND DEVELOPER US REP DENNY REHBERG LEADS FANTASY LIFE AS A COWBOY!
ALTERNET EXCLUSIVE!
This week, U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (Far-Right-R-MT) will hold what are expected to be highly emotional “Wolf Impact Hearings” throughout western Montana. For masochists wanting to attend, Rehberg’s Congressional hearings are slated for October 5 in Dillon and Hamilton and October 6 in Kalispell. For specific site locations and lists of those testifying, click HERE.
Of course, the first person to testify at each and every hearing is Rep. Denny Rehberg himself. That’s OK. It’s his show. But, my beef is that Rehberg has officially listed himself as a genuine “Montana Rancher” from Billings.
Denny Rehberg is so very proud of being a “Montana Rancher!”
Check out the beginning sentence of Rehberg’s official biography from his Congressional Web site: “U.S. Congressman Denny Rehberg, in his fifth term representing the state of Montana, is a fifth generation Montana rancher.”
For two decades now, every Montanan has been exposed to countless photos of “Rancher” Denny Rehberg in his shitty cowboy boots, rolled up shirtsleeves, and absolutely perfect cowboy hats. The shit on the boots is because Montana ranchers are not stupid. They know full well that there is NO rancher, ANYWHERE in Montana that does not have shit on his or her boots.
As for the absolutely perfect cowboy hats, most ranchers restrict them solely to County Fairs and Rodeos. There is only one other exception: Genuine Montana ranchers MIGHT wear their absolutely perfect cowboy hats to basketball games, but ONLY with the following strict caveats:
1. No normal basketball games;
2. No preliminary rounds of the playoffs; and
3. IF, and only IF, their teams survive the preliminaries and actually make it to the Montana State Class B or Class C State Finals, THEN and only THEN will real Montana ranchers bring out their absolutely perfect cowboy hats.
The rest of the year, Montana ranchers wear their normal working cowboy hats. Around the ranch, into town, to the hardware store, to regular basketball and football games, school board meetings, even to bed, especially during calving season.
Montana ranchers’ normal working cowboy hats are uniformly dusty, dirty, sweaty, and, quite honestly, smelly.
But, not Denny Rehberg’s! His cowboy hats are always absolutely perfect and they never smell. And, because Rehberg wears absolutely perfect cowboy hats all the time in order to convince us that he is a genuine “Montana Rancher,” it is quite easy to discern he is not a genuine Montana rancher.
CLEARLY A “DUDE”
Clearly, Denny Rehberg is just a “dude.” Not California-speak “dude,” mind you. But, “dude,” in the original old-timer cowboy pejorative for a “dandy” or “city dweller.”
In fact, Rehberg is such a “dude,” he even buys and sometimes wears those incredibly expensive and embarrassingly tailored “Western” suits that no self-respecting genuine Montana rancher would be caught dead in. Actually, that is the ONLY time they wear their “silly suits”—in their caskets!
It’s sad when politicians buy into their own hubris. Rehberg actually thinks he is a rancher!!
There is just one small problem. Denny Rehberg is NOT a rancher! Rehberg is merely a pitiful cowboy wannabe.
In the real world, Denny Rehberg is a speculator, land developer, and subdivider. The reason he is one of the richest men in Montana and one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. House of Representatives is sheer, dumb luck and pure opportunism.
Through the years, Rehberg made his millions upon millions by chopping up his family’s once-authentic ranch into very tiny little bits and selling these tiny little bits to out-of-staters for astronomical prices.
Rehberg’s extensive land holdings have seen neither cow, nor bull, nor horse, nor calf since 1988. That is 22 years of all hat and no beef! Now, the actual verifiable electronic records only go back as far as 1993. But, that is still 17 full years of all hat and no beef!
“We were land rich, but cash poor,” Rehberg told a reporter two years ago, somehow maintaining a straight face. Sure, it’s good “pity-poor-me” false humility, but it is pure unmitigated bullshit; perhaps the only authentic bullshit Rehberg has had anything to do with for the last 17 to 22 years.
Time after time, Rehberg pulls his infamous, but ever-so-sincere, “Montana Rancher” con, with reporter after reporter, editor after editor. And somehow, over the last two decades, he hasn’t been caught!
Maybe Montana editors and reporters just aren’t that smart. They’ve unquestioningly bought into and echo-chambered Rehberg’s “pity poor me” “Montana Rancher” cornball spiel throughout the state for a full 20 years now. All the while, this “pity poor me” genuine “Montana Rancher” has been peddling “authentic” new “ranchhouses” at $1.7 million a pop, minimum.
Because Montana’s corporate-controlled (Lee Enterprises and Gannett) media have consistently remained asleep at the switch, most Montanans still actually believe Denny Rehberg is a rancher!
Adolf Hitler’s criminally brilliant propaganda minister, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels is reputed to have said “If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth.” And: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.”
So far, lying has worked quite well for Denny Rehberg. To date, Montana media fully subscribe to his genuine “Montana Rancher” Big Lie. To the best of my knowledge, Rehberg has never been correctly and accurately identified or described as a land developer and subdivider in ANY major news or wire service story over his last 17 to 22 livestock-free years.
This week, Rehberg will again unabashedly play his certified fifth-generation “Montana Rancher” card for all those unknowing saps attending his anti-wolf Congressional hearings this week in Dillon, Hamilton, and Kalispell. And, deprived of the truth, these unknowing saps will respect Denny Rehberg, because, after all, he is a genuine fifth-generation Montana Rancher. (If distasteful reality is allowed to intrude, the fourth-generation’s Jack Rehberg was actually a professional lobbyist for the oil industry).
It’s fun to play cowboy! This is Montana! Everybody loves ranchers! And, fifth-generation! Wow! To many, that means the Rehbergs were here before the Indians!
With no cows, no bulls, no calves, no horses, no NOTHING, except a whole bunch of two-million-dollar “ranchhouses,” Rehberg steadfastly insists he is a “Montana Rancher.” Election after election, Denny Rehberg has played the cowboy card and won, big-time!
For decades now, Denny Rehberg has successfully flimflammed Montana and national media with his carefully-crafted-burnished-and-targeted public relations scam, ultimately designed to warm the cockles of all hearts of steely Montana ranchers, claiming that he is one of them!
Every election, we Montanans who are grounded in reality ask: Are the corporate media editors and reporters really that stupid? Are they drugged? Sedated? Naïve? Numbed by alcohol or cynicism? Insane? Or, just plain sold out?
Where are the young and innocent to point out, as with “The Emperor’s New Clothes:” “Who is this clown parading around with no clothes on?” Or, in this situation, “Who is this so-called self-proclaimed ‘Montana Rancher’ that has NO livestock?”
Watch Montana and national media closely for the next month. See if they report the truth.
Or, will they relegate themselves to parroting the Company line: The so-oft-told-lie-that-it-is-now-Truth that a multi-multi-millionaire livestock-free land developer and subdivider can, every election season, somehow transmute into a genuine “Montana Rancher?”
Will reporters EVER ask Denny Rehberg, now that he has subdivided everything, exactly what does he ranch? Will they ask Rehberg to name ANY other genuine “Montana Ranchers” that have had neither cow, nor bull, nor horse, nor calf for 17 to 22 years?
It is clearly time for an intervention. Like most interventions, this hard love, although necessary, will prove difficult.
Montana’s servile corporate media have unwaveringly proven themselves incapable.
But, can’t someone somewhere end this insane collective delusion and directly ask Denny Rehberg the actual year that he STOPPED being a rancher? And, in the absence of ANY livestock for 17 to 22 years, doesn’t Rehberg feel just a little bit mendacious, hypocritical, or possibly even disingenuous, continually and ceaselessly promoting himself as a genuine “Montana Rancher?”
There has never been a better time for editors and reporters to undergo instantaneous conversions! Their now-vestigial inquiring minds that originally led them into journalism might be curious: In his fantasies, how many acres does Denny Rehberg ranch? How many dollars do Rehberg’s Fantasy Ranch and imaginary livestock gross? With Rehberg ensconced inside the Beltway, who manages his mirage?
Heck, let’s get it all out in the open, once and for all. Is Denny Rehberg’s Fantasy Ranch somewhere in a make-believe county or country that the rest of us don’t know about? What does Denny’s Fantasy Ranch produce? Fictitious cows with no saturated fats or cholesterol? Phantom emus? Ghost llamas? Pretend buffalo? Fabricated goats? Who knows?
If media allow Rehberg to perpetuate this decades’ long all-hat-and-no-beef flimflam, he will likely be reelected come November.
There has got to me ONE courageous editor somewhere who could sponsor a public questionnaire, poll, or contest between now and Election Day: “Where is Denny Rehberg’s Fantasy Ranch and what exactly does Denny actually do there, besides hate wolves?”
Maybe that oh-so-desperately-needed salt-of-the-Earth editor, still young and innocent at heart, will offer a prize (perhaps a REAL COW!!) for the most entertaining and believable response.
Dispatches from the Wildlands™ ©2010, Paul Richards
"Genuine Montana Rancher" U.S. Rep Denny Rehberg
Photo Courtesy of:
“Dump Denny Rehberg” Facebook Community
