Christopher Hitchens holds forth on the term "Cowboy" in an article at Slate. It seems to be written for non-Americans -- or at least, for those who look at Texas as if it were a foreign country. (And to be fair, from 1836 to 1845, it was.)

It's a little odd reading an outsider's description of one's home and oneself. (Though I claim only to be a naturalized Texan, not a cowboy in any of the senses Hitchens describes.) You're taken aback by what other people notice about you. As Rick said when reading the Nazis' dossier on himself: "Are my eyes really brown?"

And here's a keeper:

To have had three planeloads of kidnapped civilians crashed into urban centers might have brought out a touch of the cowboy even in Adlai Stevenson.