The Slice: Have theory, will travel

I have a theory about why some people Back East seem to assume that residents of the West are insensitive and not especially bright.

It has to do with TV Westerns.

Once upon a time, when those programs dominated the airwaves, Americans were bombarded with a persistent message: Early white settlers found bullying to be richly amusing.

Do you remember? Week after week, in show after show, the nation saw scenes depicting some poor soul being tormented by a cruel cretin as a crowd of onlookers watched with obvious delight.

Often the belittled sap was the town drunk. Sometimes he was a bookish pacifist or a former gunfighter trying to change his ways.

In any event, the gawping morons standing around as some sad sack got tossed into a water trough could always be counted on to yuk it up.

So viewers in Boston or Cleveland could not help but subliminally conclude that many who populated the West in the 1800s were witless boobs.

And while I can’t prove it, I suspect some Easterners think current residents of the West are at least culturally descended from those knuckledraggers.

It ain’t so. That was make-believe.

To be sure, old TV Westerns did not have a monopoly on imbeciles enjoying bullying. Countless movies about high school come to mind. Then there’s the famous ice cream-on-the-nose moment in 1985’s “Witness,” set in Amish country. And so on.

But when it came to ancestor-slandering scenes showing guffaws and knee-slapping as some innocent dupe got shoved around and humiliated, nothing could touch TV horse operas.

And that’s no laughing matter.

Today’s Slice question: Does Spokane have its own slang vocabulary?