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B y u s i n g t h i s we b s i t e , yo u c o n s e n t t o o u r u s e o f c o o k i e s . Fo r m o re i n f o r m a t i o n , v i s i t o u r Pr i va cy Po l i cy X

POLITICS FEATURE NOVEMBER 17, 2003 ISSUE

By Molly Ivins

OCTOBER 30, 2003

Is Texas America?

Bush's home is a damn peculiar place.

A

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the 1920s The Nation published a series of articles by

prominent writers about their home states. We have recently

commissioned a number of contemporary writers to do the same. The

result is the just-published These United States (Nation Books), several

articles from which have appeared in these pages. This is the last.

ustin, Texas

Well, sheesh. I don’t know whether to warn you that because

George Dubya Bush is President the whole damn country is about

to be turned into Texas (a singularly horrible fate: as the country

song has it: “Lubbock on Everythang”) or if I should try to stand up

for us and convince the rest of the country we’re not all that insane.

Truth is, I’ve spent much of my life trying, unsuccessfully, to

explode the myths about Texas. One attempts to explain–with all

good will, historical evidence, nasty statistics and just a bow of

recognition to our racism–that Texas is not The Alamo starring John

Wayne. We’re not Giant, we ain’t a John Ford western. The first real

Texan I ever saw on TV was King of the Hill‘s Boomhauer, the guy

who’s always drinking beer and you can’t understand a word he says.

So, how come trying to explode myths about Texas always winds up

reinforcing them? After all these years, I do not think it is my fault.

The fact is, it’s a damned peculiar place. Given all the horseshit,

there’s bound to be a pony in here somewhere. Just by trying to be

honest about it, one accidentally underlines its sheer strangeness.

Here’s the deal on Texas. It’s big. So big there’s about five distinct

and different places here, separated from one another geologically,

topographically, botanically, ethnically, culturally and climatically.

Hence our boring habit of specifying East, West and South Texas,

plus the Panhandle and the Hill Country. The majority of the state’s

blacks live in East Texas, making it more like the Old South than

the Old South is anymore. West Texas is, more or less, like Giant,

except, like every place else in the state, it has an incurable

tendency toward the tacky and all the cowboys are brown. South

Texas is 80 percent Hispanic and a weird amalgam of cultures. You

get names now like Shannon Rodriguez, Hannah Gonzalez and

Tiffany Ruiz. Even the Anglos speak English with a Spanish accent.

The Panhandle, which sticks up to damn near Kansas, is High

Plains, like one of those square states, Nebraska or the Dakotas,

except more brown folks. The Hill Country, smack dab in the

middle, resembles nothing else in the state.

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Plus, plopped on top of all this, we have three huge cities, all among

the ten largest in the country. Houston is Los Angeles with the

climate of Calcutta, Dallas is Dutch (clean, orderly and conformist),

while San Antonio is Monterrey North. Many years ago I wrote of

this state: “The reason the sky is bigger here is because there aren’t

any trees. The reason folks here eat grits is because they ain’t got no

taste. Cowboys mostly stink and it’s hot, oh God, is it hot…. Texas is

a mosaic of cultures, which overlap in several parts of the state,

with the darker layers on the bottom. The cultures are black,

Chicano, Southern, freak, suburban and shitkicker. (Shitkicker is

dominant.) They are all rotten for women.” All that’s changed in

thirty years is that suburban is now dominant, shitkicker isn’t so

ugly as it once was and the freaks are now Goths or something. So it

could be argued we’re becoming more civilized.

In fact, it was always easy to argue that: Texas has symphony

orchestras and great universities and perfect jewels of art museums

(mostly in Fort Worth, of all places). It has lots of people who

birdwatch, write PhD theses on esoteric subjects and speak French,

for chrissake. But what still makes Texas Texas is that it’s ignorant,

cantankerous and ridiculously friendly. Texas is still resistant to

Howard Johnsons, Interstate highways and some forms of

phoniness. It is the place least likely to become a replica of

everyplace else. It’s authentically awful, comic and weirdly

charming, all at the same time.

Culturally, Texans rather resemble both Alaskans (hunt, fish, hate

government) and Australians (drink beer, hate snobs). The food is

quite good–Mexican, barbecue, chili, shrimp and chicken-fried

steak, an acquired taste. The music is country, blues, folk mariachi,

rockabilly and everything else you can think of. Mexican music–

norteño, ranchero–is poised to cross over, as black music did in the

1950s.

If you want to understand George W. Bush–unlike his daddy, an

unfortunate example of a truly Texas-identified citizen–you have to

stretch your imagination around a weird Texas amalgam: religion,

anti-intellectualism and machismo. All big, deep strains here, but

still an odd combination. Then add that Bush is just another li’l

upper-class white boy out trying to prove he’s tough.

The politics are probably the weirdest thing about Texas. The state

has gone from one-party Democrat to one-party Republican in

thirty years. Lyndon said when he signed the Civil Rights Act in

1964 that it would take two generations and cost the Democrats the

South. Right on both counts. We like to think we’re “past race” in

Texas, but of course East Texas remains an ugly, glaring exception.

After James Byrd Jr. was dragged to death near Jasper, only one

prominent white politician attended his funeral–US Senator Kay

Bailey Hutchison. Dubya, then governor, put the kibosh on the anti-

hate crimes bill named in Byrd’s memory. (The deal-breaker for

Bush was including gays and lesbians. At a meeting last year of the

Texas Civil Liberties Union board, vicious hate crimes against gays

in both Dallas and Houston were discussed. I asked the board

member from Midland if they’d been having any trouble with gay-

bashing out there. “Hell, honey,” she said, with that disastrous

frankness one can grow so fond of, “there’s not a gay in Midland

would come out of the closet for fear people would think they’re a

Democrat.”)

Among the various strains of Texas right-wingism (it is factually

incorrect to call it conservatism) is some leftover loony John

Birchism, now morphed into militias; country-club economic

conservatism, à la George Bush père; and the usual batty

antigovernment strain. Of course Texas grew on the tender mercies

of the federal government–rural electrification, dams, generations

of master pork-barrel politicians and vast subsidies to the oil and

gas industry. But that has never interfered with Texans’ touching

but entirely erroneous belief that this is the Frontier, and that in the

Old West every man pulled his own weight and depended on no one

else. The myth of rugged individualism continues to afflict a

generation raised entirely in suburbs with names like “Flowering

Forest Hills of Lubbock.”

The Populist movement was born in the Texas Hill Country, as

genuinely democratic an uprising as this country has ever known. It

produced legendary politicians for generations, including Ralph

Yarborough, Sam Rayburn, Lyndon and even into the 1990s, with

Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. I think it is not gone, but

only sleeping.

Texans retain an exaggerated sense of state identification, routinely

identifying themselves when abroad as Texans, rather than

Americans or from the United States. That aggravated

provincialism has three sources. First, the state is so big (though

not so big as Alaska, as they are sure to remind us) that it can take a

couple of days hard travel just to get out of it. Second, we reinforce

the sense of difference by requiring kids to study Texas history,

including roughly ten years as an independent country. In state

colleges, the course in Texas government is mandatory. Third, even

national advertising campaigns pitch brands with a Texas accent

here and certain products, like the pickup truck, are almost

invariably sold with a Texas pitch. (Makes sense: Texas leads the

nation with more than four million registered pickups.)

The founding myth is the Alamo. I was raised on the Revised

Standard Version, which holds that while it was stupid of Travis and

the gang to be there at all (Sam Houston told them to get the hell

out), it was still an amazing last stand. Stephen Harrigan in The

Gates of the Alamo is closer to reality, but even he admits in the end

there was something romantic and even noble about the episode,

like having served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the

Spanish Civil War.

According to the demographers at Texas A&M (itself a source of

much Texas lore), Texas will become “majority minority” in 2008.

Unfortunately, we won’t see it in the voting patterns for at least a

generation, and by then the Republicans will have the state so tied

up by redistricting (recently the subject of a massive standoff, now

over, in the legislature), it’s unlikely to shift for another generation

beyond that. The Christian right is heavily dominant in the Texas

Republican Party. It was the genius of Karl Rove/George W. Bush to

straddle the divide between the Christian right and the country

club conservatives, which is actually a significant class split. The

politics of resentment plays a large role on the Christian right:

Fundamentalists are perfectly aware that they are held in contempt

by “the intellectuals.” (William Brann of Waco once observed, “The

trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under

water long enough.” He was shot to death by an irate Baptist.) In

Texas, “intellectual” is often used as a synonym for “snob.” George

W. Bush perfectly exemplifies that attitude.

Here in the National Laboratory for Bad Government, we have an

antiquated and regressive tax structure–high property, high sales,

no income tax. We consistently rank near the bottom by every

measure of social service, education and quality of life (leading to

one of our state mottoes, “Thank God for Mississippi”). Yet the state

is incredibly rich in more than natural resources. The economy is

now fully diversified, so plunges in the oil market can no longer

throw the state into the bust cycle.

It is widely believed in Texas that the highest purpose of

government is to create “a healthy bidness climate.” The legislature

is so dominated by special interests that the gallery where the

lobbyists sit is called “the owners’ box.” The consequences of

unregulated capitalism, of special interests being able to buy

government through campaign contributions, are more evident

here because Texas is “first and worst” in this area. That Enron was

a Texas company is no accident: Texas was also Ground Zero in the

savings-and-loan scandals, is continually the site of major ripoffs by

the insurance industry and has a rich history of gigantic chicanery

going way back. Leland Beatty, an agricultural consultant, calls

Enron “Billie Sol Estes Goes to College.” Economists call it “control

fraud” when a corporation is rotten from the head down. I

sometimes think Texas government is a case of control fraud too.

We are currently saddled with a right-wing ideologue sugar daddy,

James Leininger out of San Antonio, who gives immense campaign

contributions and wants school vouchers, abstinence education and

the like in return. The result is a crew of breathtakingly right-wing

legislators. This session, Representative Debbie Riddle of Houston

said during a hearing, “Where did this idea come from that

everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free

whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight

out of the pit of hell.”

Texans for Lawsuit Reform, aka the bidness lobby, is a major player

and has effectively eviscerated the judiciary with a two-pronged

attack. While round after round of “tort reform” was shoved

through the legislature, closing off access to the courts and

protecting corporations from liability for their misdeeds, Karl Rove

was busy electing all nine state Supreme Court justices. So even if

you should somehow manage to get into court, you are faced with a

bench noted for its canine fidelity to corporate special interests.

Here’s how we make progress in Texas. Two summers ago,

Governor Goodhair Perry (the man has a head of hair every Texan

can be proud of, regardless of party) appointed an Enron executive

to the Public Utilities Commission. The next day, Governor

Goodhair got a $25,000 check from Ken Lay. Some thought there

might be a connection. The guv was forced to hold a press

conference, at which he explained that the whole thing was “totally

coincidental.” So that was a big relief.

We don’t have a sunshine law in Texas; it’s more like a partly cloudy

law. But even here a major state appointee has to fill out a bunch of

forms that are then public record. When the governor’s office put

out the forms on the Enron guy, members of the press, that alert

guardian watchdog of democracy, noticed that the question about

any unfortunate involvement with law enforcement looked funny.

The governor’s office had whited out the answers. A sophisticated

cover-up. The alert guardian watchdogs were on the trail. We soon

uncovered a couple of minor traffic violations and the following

item: While out hunting a few years earlier, the Enron guy

accidentally shot a whooping crane. As a result he had to pay a

$15,000 fine under what is known in Texas as the In Danger

Species Act. We print this. A state full of sympathetic hunters

reacted with, “Hell, anybody could accidentally shoot a whooper.”

But the press stayed on the story and was able to report that the guy

shot the whooper while on a goose hunt. Now the whooper is a

large bird–runs up to five feet tall. The goose–short. Now we have a

state full of hunters saying, “Hell, if this boy is too dumb to tell a

whooper from a goose, maybe he shouldn’t be regulatin’ public

utilities.” He was forced to resign.

As Willie Nelson sings, if we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.

This is our redeeming social value and perhaps our one gift to

progressives outside our borders. We do laugh. We have no choice.

We have to have fun while trying to stave off the forces of darkness

because we hardly ever win, so it’s the only fun we get to have. We

find beer and imagination helpful. The Billion Bubba March, the

Spam-o-rama, the time we mooned the Klan, being embedded with

the troops at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma, singing “I’m

Just an Asshole from El Paso” with Kinky Friedman and the Texas

Jewboys, and “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” with Ray

Wylie Hubbard laughing at the loonies in the lege–does it get better

than this? The late Bill Kugle of Athens is buried in the Texas State

Cemetery. On the front of his stone are listed his service in the

Marines in World War II, his years in the legislature, other titles

and honors. On the back of the stone is, “He never voted for a

Republican and never had much to do with them either.”

We have lost some great freedom fighters in Texas during the past

year. Billie Carr, the great Houston political organizer (you’d’ve

loved her: She got invited to the White House during the middle of

Molly Ivins Molly Ivins was a syndicated newspaper columnist, co-author of Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (Random House) and Bushwhacked

(Random House).

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the Monica mess, sashayed through the receiving line, looked Bill

Clinton in the eye and said, “You dumb son of a bitch”), always said

she wanted her funeral to be like her whole life in politics: It should

start half an hour late, she wanted a balanced delegation of

pallbearers–one black, one brown, two women–and she wanted an

open casket and a name tag stuck over her left tit that said, “Hi

there! My name is Billie Carr.” We did it all for her.

At the funeral of Malcolm McGregor, the beloved legislator and

bibliophile from El Paso, we heard “The Eyes of Texas” and the

Aggie War Hymn played on the bagpipes. At the service for Maury

Maverick Jr. of San Antonio, and at his request, J. Frank Dobie’s

poem “The Mustangs” was read by the poet Naomi Shihab Nye. The

last stanza is:

So sometimes yet, in the realities of silence and solitude,

For a few people unhampered a while by things,

The mustangs walk out with dawn, stand high, then

Sweep away, wild with sheer life, and free, free, free–

Free of all confines of time and flesh.

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