Six-Gun Moses, Farewell

I, like quite a few others my age, probably first associated actor Charlton Heston with Moses. I remember The Ten Commandments coming on ABC every year around Easter. Of course, I had seen him in other things like Planet Of The Apes and later Ben Hur. I probably had this image in my mind of the archetypal Hollywood Hero.

Years later, while watching Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine I was given a new image, and this is the one that sticks with me. This was an image of a man who held NRA rallies in Colorado not long after Columbine when people were still huring. It is an image of a man who turned his back and walked away when shown a phot of a gun crime victim. The great hero, so wrapped up in his personal agenda that he was unwilling to even acknowledge that guns cause pain and death to innocent children.

As he walked away from the cameras that had ultimately exposed him as a racist, Heston looked more like a tired, feeble old man than a Hollywood Hero.

Maybe they should have remade The Ten Commandments with Six-gun Moses looking out over the Israelites, staff held high above his head, saying those now famous words:

"From my cold, dead hands."

At last the gun has been pried loose.

The Spokesman