by Travis Mateer

If you don’t know how the Montana World Affairs Council has been building a relationship with the apartheid state of Israel, then you won’t understand the propaganda value behind this recent headline in the Missoulian:

Because of the pervasive ignorance in America’s general population when it comes to how geopolitics functions through NGOs and other means of exerting influence via soft power, there are people in Missoula who think they’re actually being supportive of “women” when they buy into these manipulative western narratives about adversarial powers.

Closer to home, a woman claiming credit for bringing the production of Yellowstone to Montana is proud of her efforts because of how the show features strong female characters. After championing the MONEY benefits of hosting Yellowstone (aka the most important thing), the “Film Commissioner” for the Montana Film Office, Allison Whitmer, added this lovely “personal note” for KGVO:

On a personal note, Whitmer said producer Taylor Sheridan and the Yellowstone series has broken new ground in their portrayal of strong, independent women.

“I really enjoy watching the female characters that Taylor Sheridan has created,” she said. “As we know, Montana is a state that has been built on the labor of men and women, and to see a television show with a woman as governor, where a woman’s been elected senator, and of course, you know that Montana had the first woman in the House of Representatives in this country (Jeannette Rankin), where women aren’t afraid to run businesses and make decisions and they are pivotal story points in the show. I really feel that Taylor has captured all of this strength that comes to our state through all the women that live here.”

I don’t think Allison Whitmer had the brawl on last Sunday’s episode between Beth Dutton and the intentionally obnoxious “hippie”, Summer Higgins, in mind because the whole scene, including the vegan provocation around the Dutton dinner table, was so over-the-top, how anyone can be proud of this crap is beyond me, regardless of how much money the production is allegedly bringing to Missoula.

After the fight between these two women, the glimmers of a more friendly understanding between them emerges. So, for those familiar with this show, not only are women allowed to be cut-throat corporate raiders and sex-empowered power brokers, they also get to perpetuate the traditionally male-centric power-sharing caricature of bros fighting it out to become friends.

Isn’t this equality awesome!

Another BIG FAN of the show Yellowstone is Missoula’s new Clerk of District Court, Amy McGhee. Before getting to the obnoxious fandom, Amy does provide some usable information about the role of the clerk for district court.

“The clerk of court is the official record keeper for all filings in the Fourth Judicial District, Missoula County,” she said. “So any of documents that are filed into any cases, we are the official record keeper. We also assist the judges. We have a deputy clerk in the courtroom each time there are judges on the bench. They keep the minutes of what goes on in the hearings. We also issue all of the marriage licenses for Missoula County, and I think we’re closing in on 1,000 so far this year.”

After this brief description of her civic role, McGhee proceeds to confess her excitement at the use of the Missoula County Courthouse for a backdrop to scenes from Yellowstone’s 5th season. Did she catch a glimpse of Costner? Yes she did. Does she appreciate strong women? The article doesn’t say, but it DOES end with a list of who those district court judges are, and they include judge Jason Marks.

Why is that significant? Let me explain.

Let’s say you’re the mother of a strong woman who made the dangerous (and, ultimately, fatal) decision to leave her piece of shit husband and during the long civil process of determining Personal Representative for your deceased daughter, a judge gives you the legal right to copy and/or review personal items before they are released to the husband, like a computer.

In this hypothetical scenario, if you wanted to prove that a County Attorney’s Office is in contempt of court because they IGNORED this order from a judge, and released the items to the POS husband without review, then you might want to get transcripts of the court hearing where the judge gave the mother this right, and the person to talk to about getting those court documents would be Amy McGhee.

Real court proceedings aren’t as fun and sexy as a tv show, or as exciting as supporting a freedom movement in some faraway land, so the stories of what’s happening to local women don’t get told, keeping our community mostly ignorant that western Montana appears to be the LAST BEST PLACE TO KILL YOUR WIFE.

If you find that depiction of western Montana upsetting, good. I’m not here to entertain you, I’m here to break the grip of the narrative controllers who prop up a show where an alcoholic daughter who uses any means of violence and manipulation to keep daddy happy and his land safe is some example of feminine strength, while a REAL woman who paid the ultimate price for leaving an abusive situation is disappeared from Montana’s criminal justice system.

If you would like to help me break their narrative control, please consider making a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!