Who Let the Dogs In? (26 page)

of all confines of time and flesh.

November 2003

Smart as a Shrub

G
EORGE
BUSH THE
Younger (“Shrub” we call him) is running for governor of Texas and shapes up as a promising source of electoral entertainment. Shrub was recently in the Rio Grande Valley at a Republican function where two actual brown persons were in attendance. He headed toward them with his hand out, saying, “HitherehitherehowareyouI’mGeorgeBushgladtomeetyouhow’sitgoingthere.” Shrub is a fast talker.

He next inquired what these gentlemen did and one replied that he works for Mexican-American economic development.

“That’sgreatthat’sgreat,” said Shrub, and then leaned over to confess in greatest confidence, “If you’re for making the pie bigger—I’m for that. If you’re for making the pie smaller—I’m not for that.” And they say this boy is not ready to be governor.

Our public servants have been busy contributing to the general joy lately: Mayor Lee Cooke of Austin had this to say about why the city has been negotiating in secret for a new city manager: “I wanted to have all my ducks in a row so if we did get into a posture we could pretty much slam-dunk this thing and put it to bed.”

Dallas justice added yet more lustre to its national renown by attempting to hang on to Randall Dale Adams, an innocent man sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit, long after it was clear to all but the meanest intelligence there was no way he could even be tried again.

And the Legislature is almost too embarrassing to contemplate. Turns out the Parks and Wildlife Department has obligingly been stocking the Speaker’s ranch with deer, elk, bass, and turkey, for which he has not paid. When this was pointed out to him, the Speak promptly offered to round-up the beasties and send them back.

One solon has introduced a bill to lop off the fingers of repeat drug offenders, joint by joint and then digit by digit for each offense. Another senator wants to make it a felony for anyone knowingly to spread AIDS.

The Texas Lege has long had a tendency to notice grievous social problems and then pass laws against them. But the city of San Diego seems to have carried this trend to an apogee even the Texas Legislature hasn’t yet contemplated: In San Diego, they ticket the homeless just as if they were illegally parked cars. The practice raises questions, of course. If a homeless person won’t move along, can the cops put a boot on him? Can a homeless person say, “I’d rather not take the ticket here, just send it to me?”

Thank heavens we can turn to Washington for comic relief. Shrub’s daddy’s dog had puppies and that’s it for the good news: drugs, S&Ls, the environment, Third World debt—all of these get worse by the day while Bush the Elder continues to impress us with the news that he rises at seven and stays awake through cabinet meetings.

Newt Gingrich, now there’s a gladsome tiding. Great hair, no integrity. He’s the real Bob Forehead. The reason Republicans elected this repellent little demagogue to the whipship is that they thought it would annoy Democrats. That’s the Donald Segretti school of politics. With any luck, Robert K. Dornan of California will be next.

If the Republicans keep putting these right-wing fruitloops out front as spokesmen for their party, Democrats won’t have to do dog.

Meantime, I’m pushing a new right-wing Dallas billionaire. This specimen’s name is Harold Simmons, and he’s a corporate raider by trade. He supports conservative Republican senators because “I feel I get more bang for my buck dealing with senators than I could anybody else. In the last five years I’ve headed up numerous fund-raising events here in Dallas for out-of-state Republican senatorial candidates. As a result, I can now call on a first-name basis about thirty Republican senators.”

Isn’t that nice? And to what ends does ol’ Harold put his influence?

“I will lobby for things I believe in, primarily to keep Government off our backs, to keep them from passing laws to stop hostile takeovers and junk bonds and things like that.”

I like the boy’s candor. I like the equation of “keeping the Government off our backs” (where is Harold on drug testing?) with the use of junk bonds for hostile take-overs.

There should be an ad campaign on television. Some announcer with a four-balls voice will say, “Freedom to use junk bonds—one of our fundamental constitutional rights.”

May 1989

Too Wussy for Texas

B
IGGEST
FIGHT WE’VE
had all summer here in the Great State is over what motto to put on our license plates. The Highway Commission voted early this summer to put
TEXAS—THE FRIENDSHIP STATE
on our plates. This was unanimously condemned as Too Wussy for Texas, and it took Bubba a couple of months to get it turned around.

Historians will recall that we had the same flap a few years ago when some unusually demented Highway Commissioners decided
TEXAS—THE WILDFLOWER STATE
would look good on our plates. This caused the ever-vigilant guardians of Texas machismo to declare that we might as well call it The Gay Rights State.

Now, The Friendship State is not nearly as wussy a motto as The Wildflower State—and it does have cultural roots. Our state motto is Friendship, and our state safety slogan is Drive Friendly, which is ungrammatical but perfectly clear.

And it wouldn’t be false advertising—Texans actually are friendlier than normal people—at least outside the big cities, which you can prove any day by driving into a Texas town and saying “Hidy.”

But we do have a shitkicker image to maintain, so the papers have been rife with suggestions like Yankee Go Home, and Fuck Alaska, and Texas: Kiss My Ass.

If we were to go for honesty instead of public relations, we’d wind up with something like Too Much Is Not Enough or Texas—Land of Wretched Excess. Or, perhaps, Home of the
FDIC
.

If honesty were a national license plate policy, we’d see:

IT WAS
a slow summer for scandal here until Bo Pilgrim, an East Texas chicken magnate, walked onto the floor of the state Senate and started handing out $10,000 checks with no payee filled in. He said he wanted to encourage the senators, then meeting in special session on the workers’ compensation issue, to do right by bidness.

Turns out it’s perfectly legal to walk onto the Senate floor and start handing out checks for $10,000 made out to no one in particular. Just another campaign contribution, folks. Bo Pilgrim is a familiar sight on Texas television, where he dresses up in a pilgrim suit and pitches ads for his fowl. He adds a certain je ne sais quoi to our communal life. His chicken factory is a major source of pollution in East Texas so, of course, the governor put him on the state Water Quality Board.

THE DEATH
of Houston congressman Mickey Leland made so many hearts ache that poor Mick like to got buried under a mountain of hagiography. But you can’t make a saint of a guy who laughed as much as Mickey.

My favorite Leland stories go back to the early 1970s, when he came to the Texas Legislature, one of the first blacks ever elected right out of a black district without having to get white folks’ permission to run at-large. He showed up wearing an Afro and dashikis, and the Bubbas thought he was some kind of freak-radical Black Panther, and it meant the end of the world was at hand.

His first session Leland carried a generic-drug bill to help poor, sick, old people. He couldn’t believe anyone would vote against poor, sick, old folks, but the drug companies and the doctors teamed up to beat his bill. After the vote, he stalked up to the medical-association lobbyists at the back of the House and in a low voice that shook with fury he hissed, “You are evil motherfuckers.” They almost wet their pants on the spot. He got the bill passed in the next session.

During the 1975 Speaker’s race, members of the Black Caucus made a shrewd political play—they deserted the liberal/labor candidate and threw their support to Billy Wayne Clayton, a West Texas redneck, in exchange for some major committee chairmanships and heavy clout. Leland came out of the meeting with Clayton waving a tiny Confederate flag and announced, “We done sold de plantation.”

I remember wondering early on if guys like Mickey were going to make a difference in the Lege. One day during his first session I saw him standing in the middle of the Capitol rotunda, which is a natural amplifier, trying to get Craig Washington and Paul Ragsdale, who were peering down at him from the third-floor gallery, to come along. In a voice that stopped traffic he yelled up, “Gottdammit, are you niggers comin’ down to get lunch, or what?” Yep, gonna make a difference.

And he did. He made a much bigger difference in the world than all the damned old racists who used to vote against him.

October 1989

A Fairly Normal Spring