Greetings from Bushtopia

Well, howdy Grinnellians! Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, I won’t be returning to the snow-covered prairies of Iowa pending January, but until that time, the S&B can have a record two foreign correspondents: one from jolly ol’ England, the other from Jesus-land/Bushtopia/Red State/Texas! To be honest, I’m from Houston, a relatively Democratic stronghold in a state once known for Ann Richards, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kinky Friedman and Molly Ivins. Now, all we’re really known for is Dubya.

Don’t get me wrong: many Texans are enjoying the notoriety/revulsion worldwide, for we are far from all being beer-bellied, toothless rednecks/cowpokes. The major urban centers are spawning grounds for great people of all sorts!

Houston alone has produced such luminaries as Hilary Duff, David Koresh, South Park Mexican, Andrea Yates, R. Kelly, Enron and Halliburton. Hmm ... we have obnoxious pop stars, child-molesting rappers, murderous religious fanatics and war profiteers ... Everything that makes modern America great.

Nearby Sugar Land also produced House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, for whom Republican leaders recently invalidated a 1993 rule that Republican members in congress holding positions of authority have to step down while under grand jury investigation. The fun is only getting started when one realizes that 4/5 of the Republican members of the House Ethics committee have taken donations from Mr. DeLay’s PAC. Welcome to national politics, Texas-style.

On the other hand, we also have Walter Cronkite, Renee Zellweger, Patrick Swayze, Roger Clemens, Michael Dell, Howard Hughes, Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland, ZZ Top, Brent Spiner (for the Star Trek crowd) and the oh-so-tasty Landry’s Seafood. I’d like to think that the good outweighs the bad, but I’ve my doubts at times—especially concerning that Duff chick. She scares me.

Regrettably, we’re also the hometown of soon-to-be-former Secretary of Education Rod Paige, most famous for referring to the largest teachers’ union in America as ‘a terrorist organization.’ You can discern the general quality of public education from that incident. Yours truly would have been academically sunk were it not for a few teachers that were not suffering from Alzheimer’s and/or Shellshock. In general, you get your shits, giggles and edumication where you can around here.

Unsurprisingly, Texas also has cultural ups and downs. There are wonderful orchestras, historical sites and three Six Flags theme parks. On the other hand, there’s the Glen Rose Creation Science Museum (squatting by the most famous dinosaur tracks in the country) and stores in small towns that sell only candy-coated arthropods and neon-colored wine coolers. In general, the smaller the town in Texas, the stranger the attractions present. Let the tourist beware, especially if they’re strange looking and prone to bizarre outbursts like I am.

For the completely uninitiated: no, I don’t have a horse, ranch or oil well. I do, however, own a .22 Rifle. Well it’s not really mine. It actually belongs to my little sister. It was a coming-of-age present from our Aunt who lives in the mountains of Colorado doing odd jobs and redesigning her boyfriend’s house, but that’s another long story.

We haven’t actually fired it yet, since we’ve all been too busy with everything else to go to a shooting range. (Of which there are many in Texas. Duh!) Nevertheless, it’s great fun to pose threateningly with it for pictures, especially when I’ve two weeks’ stubble and wearing a flannel shirt. Just imagine the above picture and add a rifle and hat with earflaps.You get the idea.

So, in the end, show some sympathy towards Texans and the other Red-state residents. Many of them are pretty cool; some of them might even agree with you on some political issues. As a warning: if you do get into a political discussion, never let it slide into abortion. Never. Someone will get hurt. And it’ll probably be the one that supports gun control. So go forth into the world of people who think liberals, progressives and democrats are a bunch of godless, sodomitic commies, and show them a thing or two you learned from a Texan.