I thought the days of Hollywood hyping heroes as people who always gave away their money were long gone.  Roy and Gene and Hoppy, cowboy kings all, never took a dime for their Saturday matinee heroics.  But their kindred spirits are alive and well today, right inside my TV set.  But they come with a modern twist.

Take the "Karen Cisco" series about a sartorially saucy female federal marshal.  In a recent episode, Cisco, while pulling an all-nighter stakeout, has a cell phone chat with her boss that goes something like this:

Boss: I suppose you'll be putting in for overtime.

Cisco: That's right.

Boss: And if you go past midnight you'll want double time.

Cisco: So take it up with the Marshall's union.

The parallel plotline has Cisco's sire, a soft-boiled private eye, working a philandering husband case.  He makes it a point to grab half his fee up front.  Turns out the aggrieved spouse is not the guy's wife – she and the "other woman" are working an unspecified scam and the "husband" is the mark.  He meets with his client at a restaurant, demands the back end of his $5,000 fee, and produces the photos that uncover the con.  He threatens to call in the cops and the client clops out.  So the gumshoe earns five grand from a scumbag hustler.  What does he do with the dough?  Upon exiting the eatery he spies a hirsute homeless man with a sign: "Please help – in need of major dental work."  Did I say soft-boiled private eye?  How about softheaded?  He hands the full fee to the fleabag.

Now, we know this private dick has an apartment, a car, a cell phone, a camera and, purchased in an earlier episode, one of those big expensive sailboats, the kind with a cabin.  So how does he pay for this stuff if he gives away his income to a bum who'll likely DOA while guzzling his way through the first fifty bucks of it?

Moral: if you're a government employee you're entitled to double time taxbucks.  Never mind that the perp Karen Cisco is stalking is wanted for murder and embezzlement, two crimes not mentioned in the constitution, which should cause libertarians and constitutionalists to question the legal right of a federal marshals office even to exist.  But if you're working in the private sector, better give away your money or you won't be a sympathetic character.

In "Hack," two cops copped a load of drug money during a bust.  One is still on the payroll but the show's namesake jockeys a cab for a living.  Since they haven't spent the money and they're both angst-ridden about it, they qualify as flawed post-modern heroes.  Dirty but repentant.  But our Hack won't even accept legitimate payment when he risks his life do-gooding for others every week, even though he can't support his wife and kid.  By refusing to accept clean money as penance for taking the dirty dough, our Hack is somehow transformed into Roy and Gene and Hoppy.  Evil, it seems, resides in the actual, physical money and not in a person's actions.  (Libertarians will note that it's the drug war that offers these corrupting opportunities in the first place.)

I've always felt insulted by these portrayals of honestly earned income somehow despoiling the honor of heroes.  We even used to talk about it as kids.  Roy and Gene and Hoppy.  They all wore store-bought duds and looked well fed, rode fancy horses with fancy saddles and tack, and twirled those magic chrome-plated pearl-handled six-shooters that pumped out 15 rounds of lead without reloading.  How could they afford it all when they always gave away their Wanted Dead or Alive reward money to the widow lady or little lame-legged Luke?

I'd probably scrounged pop bottles for a week, refundable at two cents a pop, just to buy my ticket to that matinee.  It's not that I was against charity – if I had extra bottles I'd take a friend to the movies with me.  Take care of yourself first, then help someone else.  At age 10 I had a better idea of the value of money, and Royal Crown Cola bottles, than those idiot Hollywood producers.

Maybe that's why Paladin became my favorite.  He and his traveling gun wouldn't budge a boot beyond that posh Barbary Coast hotel unless his client wired money up front.  He was my kind of capitalist gunslinger.