Who Let the Dogs In? (27 page)

T
HE
TRANSSEXUAL TORCH
murderer who’s in a runoff for chairman of the Harris County (Houston) Democratic Party here in the Great State was my man (well, OK, so she is my woman now) until I found out more about her politics.

Hey, I’ve got nothing against torch murderers—she’s paid her debt to society. Besides, she was a different person then. As for the gender change, people have a right to choose alternative sexual identities; at least she stayed Hispanic. But now I find out that after switching candidates several times in the recent special congressional election in Houston, she wound up supporting Al Edwards. Al Edwards, for you outlanders, is the state representative who favors lopping off the fingers of drug dealers, joint by joint, digit by digit, conviction by conviction. That’s too weird for me, even if the torch murderer’s opponent is Lloyd Bentsen’s nephew.

(Speaking of the late, great Houston congressional race won by Craig Washington, if we could get the new congressman to give the commencement address at my alma mater, I could write an article about it headlined,
MR. WASHINGTON GOES TO SMITH.
)

The recent plebiscite offered many snacks for thought. We’ve got a guy who’s seriously dead running in Tarrant County (Fort Worth). But the convicted drug dealer lost his legislative race, if not his fingers, in the Rio Grande Valley. On the other hand, the state senator accused of murder won handily. So did the fellow who was accused of being a pornographer and a henchman of organized crime.

But the real triumph over electoral handicap was the reelection of Frank Tejeda of San Antonio, who stood accused not only of wife-beating, child neglect, adultery, and whoring for the insurance lobby, but also of stealing from the Little League. Stealing from the Little League is low. But Tejeda successfully denied all charges and is back in the state Senate.

And some races are still in doubt: We may yet turn out to have nominated a monkey or a car for public office. We regularly put inanimate objects on the public payroll.

The big news was our peppy race for state executioner. Gosh, what a lot of fun the voters had trying to decide which candidate would fry the most felons if he or she became governor. Each and every one of them vowed to outfry the others; the gubernatorial race became a fry-off. Actually, we no longer fry felons in the electric chair: We now put them to sleep, like dogs, by lethal injection. Not in the least deterred by this symptom of creeping humanism, our gubernatorial candidates made a fetish of the death penalty.

Treasurer Ann Richards was judged the least bloodthirsty, but made it into a run-off anyway against Attorney General Jim Mattox, who watches people die for the fun of it.

On the Republican side, Clayton Williams, a rich guy from Midland, bought himself the nomination for a pricey $8 million, twice as much as was spent by his three opponents combined. Williams promised to teach those who try drugs “the joys of bustin’ rocks.” He plans to double the number of prison cells in the state without raising taxes by saving on the air-conditioning bill. We all had to admit, it was innovative.

Meanwhile, the Lege is back in Gridlock City over the question of how to finance the public schools fairly. Some good hands tried to head ’em off at the impasse, but it was like drawin’ shovel duty in a feedlot. The state Senate passed a bill that calls for $1.2 billion in new spending, the governor threatens to veto anything over $300 million, and the house just voted no. Their ox is in the proverbial ditch.

All in all, a fairly normal spring here in Texas—tornados, floods, killer bees, primary elections, and the Legislature.

May 1990

Happy Days for Armchair Rambos

Y
OU
MAY HAVE
noticed that many of our fellow citizens have slipped into wretched excess on the patriotism front. Yellow ribbons tied around the necks of pink plastic yard flamingos. A bumper sticker on a huge gas-hog that says,
WHIP THEIR ASS, THEN TAKE THEIR GAS.

Eight veterans groups in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, endorsed a decision not to let an anti-war group use the county-owned Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall. The chairman of the hall’s board explained the anti-war group is opposed to “the flag, martial music, and everything else that is patriotic.”

All in all, festive days for armchair Rambos.

For those of you who relish life’s little ironies, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has just bought $590 million worth of Citicorp, America’s largest bank, thus becoming its largest shareholder. I personally enjoyed President Bush’s presentation of his energy policy in midwar: He said he wouldn’t do anything to conserve energy because he didn’t want Americans to have to make such a sacrifice.

Here in Texas, Bonker Central as always, we’re yellow-ribboned out the wa-zoo. Happily, the Lege is in session to give us comic relief from the war news. State Senator Rodney Ellis recently found himself in a minority of one on a committee vote. He looked around and said, “When I look at Senator Lucio, I see bilingual [Lucio is Hispanic]. When I look at Senator Leedom, I see bipartisan [Leedom is Republican]. When I look at Senator Whitmire, I see biracial [Whitmire is white, Ellis is black]. But when I look at me, all I see is by myself.”

TEXAS WAR
humor: Mrs. Saddam Hussein is seriously pissed off. She says, “Saddam, you are the dumbest guy in the world. You could have talked your way out of this, but now we’re in a war. You are the stupidest person in the world.” He says, “You really think so?” She says, “Go ask the mirror.” So he goes into the bathroom, looks into the mirror, and says, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the dumbest one of all?” Comes out a minute later and asks, “Who’s this Clayton Williams person?”

Q: What’s the difference between America and Kuwait?

A: Kuwait is a banking system without a country.

WELL, WE
do have some other news. Our Speaker has been indicted. I know, I know, all you Gib Lewis fans around the nation are groaning and saying, “Ah, nah, not the Gibber!” What can I say? It’s traditional to have the Speaker of the Texas House indicted. The Gibber is the third in a row to have someone roll over on him. (Actually, we did have one Speaker in there, 1973 to 1975, who was not indicted: He was murdered by his wife instead.)

Gibber’s problems stem from this vacation he took in Mexico with a woman-not-his-wife. They stayed in an $850-a-night hotel room (and I’d like to point out that it’s damned hard to find an $850-a-night hotel room in Mexico), paid for by a lobbyist who wanted a certain piece of legislation killed. The Gibber, that sly devil, registered as “Don Lewis.”

The good news is that so far it’s only a misdemeanor, because the D.A. can’t prove the Speaker killed the bill. So the Demosthenes of the Texas Lege remains at the helm in the House, still confusing sin tax with syntax, humility with humidity, asking people in wheelchairs to stand and be recognized, and otherwise contributing his own special je ne sais quoi to our political life.

LEGISLATIVE JOKE:

Q: What’s the difference between an anus and an asshole?

A: An anus can’t put its arm around you.

The New Texas under Governor Ann Richards is otherwise progressing nicely, thank you. She’s put a black woman on the board of regents of Texas A&M, so we know the world will never be the same again. In fact, if we weren’t all obsessed by the war, half the press in the country would be down here whomper-jawed at the revolution. As it is, it barely makes page 17-D in the Texas press.

Still, it is amazing how much difference one governor who cares can make even in a “weak-governor” system. Trouble is, Ann can’t be funny anymore—at least not in the same way. It’s not considered “gubernatorial.” Which means that the funniest line at a roast of Representative Jake Pickle a few nights ago turned out to be Liz Carpenter’s. She said she’d known Jake so long she knew him when he was still a cucumber.

April 1991

A Scientific Explanation of Texas

A
LOCAL
TELEVISION
station here in Lubbock, Texas, recently ran a three-part investigative series on pantyhose entitled “Born to Run.”

And some people wonder why I love Lubbock.

After a local farmer mowed an anti-Clinton message into his wheat field, another television station reported that he had “mowed it with his concubine.”

Meanwhile, culture in Lubbock is stepping right along: A local feed and seed dealer named Godbold put up the money for the Godbold Cultural Center, which features an Espresso & Cappuccino Bar, so there.

Lubbock is, alas, now so conservative that even the city clerk, who has been getting elected as a Democrat since shortly after the Earth’s crust cooled, has now switched to the Republican Party. Mark Harmon, a professor at Texas Tech who is running unopposed for Democratic county chairman, says he’s thinking of switching parties so he can get elected, too.

Meanwhile, Texas politics is roaring along while no one in the state pays any attention. I think maybe we should start scoring our pols and awarding medals. In the last Democratic Senate candidate debate, Evelyn Lantz, who represents the Lyndon LaRouche cult, held out firmly for colonization of Mars. I’d give her 5.8 for artistic impression.

“Hey, Kay Bailey Hutchison, what’re you going to do now that you’ve been acquitted?”

“I’m going to Disney World!”

And, indeed, Senator Hutchison was triumphantly acquitted in Fort Worth after the prosecutor refused to present his case against her just because the judge said he couldn’t use his evidence.

I am working on a theory that there may actually be a scientific explanation for why this state is so strange. We know there’s helium in the air around Amarillo and lithium in the water in El Paso. In West Texas, the water has so much naturally occurring fluoride that everyone has strong yellow teeth, and it sometimes kills off African violets and goldfish. (This is the subject of Robin Dorsey’s semi-famous country song, “Her Teeth Was Stained but Her Heart Was Pure.”) Don’t you think it’s likely fluoride affects the old psyche as well? Of course, in East Texas, where fluoride is still considered a communist plot, we’ll just have to admit that the problem is genetic. And if there’s a natural element responsible for South Texas, we probably don’t want to know what it is.

Texas justice threatens to join Texas politics as a synonym for “would drive buzzards off a roadkill.” We’re having this spate of Rodney King-lets, in which law enforcement officers videotape themselves brutalizing suspects and then charge the suspects with assault. We were especially impressed with the imagination it took to charge the citizen who was shot twice in the back.