Fort Worth Weekly // September 20-26, 2023

Texas for Breakfast

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spent the last three decades reducing our great state to what we are now — an international laughingstock.

Cattle manure. Openly deranged.

Semiautomatic rifle-packing asshats.

And this was well before the dog and Paxton pony fiasco.

We’re no longer seen as a great state. We’re viewed more like a Third-World banana republic (emphasis on “banana”). Texas is now a joke, an adjectival term of derision, as in “those idiots went all Texas on us” or “that stupidity is Texas-level, yo!”

BY E.R. BILLS

I know it’s hard to fathom, but there really was a time when “Don’t Mess with Texas” actually meant something and not just in terms of litter.

It forewarned the uninitiated of bona fide badasses, legendary contrarians, daring dreamers, and serious politicians who had no qualms about taking fatuous pretenders out behind the proverbial woodshed and beating the living or figurative shite out of them.

Sam Houston once drubbed a U.S. congressman half to death with his cane in Washington, D.C., and practically walked away scot-free. (His lawyer was Francis Scott Key!) Then, three decades later, during his second stint as governor of Texas, he jeered the Texas secession convention, refusing to swear loyalty to the Confederacy. A century later, Denison native Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during WWII and became a twoterm U.S. president, would very bluntly throw staggering shade at the then-budding but insatiably greedy American Military Industrial Complex. JFK didn’t heed Ike’s remarks, and, though Lyndon Baines Johnson played along (to his discredit and, I think, regret), he also became the most progressive American president in history, enacting dozens of eye-popping rights, privileges, and freedoms that most Americans today take for granted. Then we traded longhorns for lambs, allowing our last real lion, Ann Richards (she had more brains and balls than Poppy or Sonny Boy Bush combined), to be ousted by Dubya’s personal “turd blossom,” Karl Rove.

Since this act of nasty debasement, a gaggle of Republican oaf-keepers have

For educated Americans and most of the rest of the world, Texans are synonymous with shameless cretins, imbeciles, morons, or losers. The slow, Republican-led domestic intellectual plummet and resulting international perception shift have reduced us to a superficial, xenophobic, conformist dystopia. Which sincerely sucks, because we used to be the exception, not fascist fools.

Texas produced the first female sheriff, the first all-women state Supreme Court, the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court (Sandra Day O’Connor), the first Black woman in the U.S. House of Representatives (Barbara Jordan), and the first Chicano G.I. Joe (legendary Medal of Honor recipient Roy Benavidez). Texas was the home turf for the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the first Bilingual Education Act, Roe v. Wade, and dozens of landmarks that define the Great Society. Texas was even the base of operations for Madalyn Murray O’Hair and the American Atheists association and Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill

Texas produced Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Beyonce, Selena, Freddy Fender, Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Rauschenberg, Erykah Badu, John Graves, Doug Sahm, the Butthole Surfers … hell, even Black Panther Bobby Seale is a native Texan!

The Lone Star state also produced icons of the Third Estate, including Walter Cronkite, Molly Ivins, Dan Rather, and Jim Leher.

Today, Texas politics has descended into an ignorant crescendo of conformist, party-line blowhards like Greg Abbott, John “Cornholio” Cornyn, and Ted Cooz. And Texas’ national contributions to cultural and intellectual development rise to little more than lukewarm, rustic slop continued on page 5

We’re easy to mess with now because our decades of red leadership have failed us.

Robert Elrod

Cock Blocking

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onto Democrats, whether it’s McCarthy’s “Hey, look over there!” antics as the former guy inches closer to an 8-by-8 prison cell or our horrible county judge’s peddling of CRT bullshit painting liberals as the racists in the room.

BY STATIC

Ken Paxton has good reason to celebrate. The indicted state attorney general who still faces two counts of securities fraud (both felonies with a potential 99-year sentence) and an ongoing FBI investigation was recently acquitted on 16 articles of impeachment by the Texas Senate. Only two Republicans (Bob Nichols of Jacksonville and Kelly Hancock of North Richland Hills) voted to convict the demonstrably corrupt idiot on any article.

The most serious allegations before the senate involved a 2020 incident when eight of Paxton’s top deputies reported that he abused his power. The FBI, which fielded the criminal complaints, is looking into allegations that Paxton misused his office to aid Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, a close friend and political donor to Paxton, by helping Paul investigate perceived enemies and delay foreclosures, among other accusations. Testimony during the impeachment trial alleged Paul paid for renovations to Paxton’s home to enjoy favors from the AG’s office.

Even with his narrow escape from impeachment, Texas’ top law enforcement official still faces disbarment for abusing his office when he filed frivolous lawsuits to overturn the resounding victory of President Joe Biden in 2020. Disgraced former president Donald Trump is looking at several dozen felony charges for allegedly hiding confidential government documents, falsifying business records to hide an affair with a porn star, and inciting a mob to overthrow the U.S. government, and like Paxton, the senile, obese stain on humanity may have some serious jail time in his

future. Unlike the sycophantic Texas Senate, real juries consist of everyday Americans. While a saner political party might question why their top current and former elected officials continually face felony indictments, Freedumb Caucus Republicans are moving forward with not an impeachment proceeding but a weak

impeachment “hearing” on the president. Without any evidence, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy seeks to tie son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings to Papa Joe. It’s murky stuff that only self-diluted right-wingers seem to buy into or care about. Republican officials are masters of projecting their awful beliefs and actions

Closer to home, elected GOP officials are also working to skirt accountability by collectively deleting their social media. A search of the campaign websites of family court judges Beth Poulos (PoulosforJudge. com), Baca Bennett (ReelectJudgeBennett. com), Jesse Nevarez (JudgeJesse.com), and James Munford (MunfordforJudge.com) reveals links to once-active Facebook pages with notifications that the content has been pulled. The family court judges may be shitting their black robes ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the legality of said judges blocking the public from viewing their official social media pages. At issue are First Amendment privileges afforded to folks who reply to the pages of political candidates and elected officials.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently ruled that comments made on the social media accounts of elected officials are protected under the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently agreed to settle the matter sometime later this year of whether Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and similar apps are protected public forums or private accounts managed by elected officials.

Our contemptible family-court judges are also blocking constituents, and they’re not the only ones. Local YouTuber Cody Highroller alleges Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker blocked him from her public profile, and earlier this year, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office cut off public comments across three social media platforms: Facebook, X, and Instagram. Elected officials blocking individuals on social media could expose the city or county to costly civil rights lawsuits. The New York Times described one U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that further connects access to public officials’ social media platforms as protected under the U.S. Constitution. The case deals with two California school board members who created social media accounts to promote their campaigns and then to communicate with constituents. The elected officials blocked two parents who made critical comments. The parents sued and won.

Sane voters are losing online access to all the crooks and conmen conservatives keep electing.

Courtesy Facebook