The UnTexan

RICK PERRY, THE PRIDE OF TEXAS, SAYS: KILL HIM! KILL HIM! KILL HIM!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is killing for votes again. What else will he do to be re-elected? Did some guy laugh at Rick's penis and humiliate him in some dank, damp schoolboy locker room? If not that, what? He must be compensating for something. And then there's this: "The case bore similarities to the only case in which Perry commuted a death sentence. In August 2007 he spared the life of Kenneth Foster, who had been convicted of capital murder in a law of parties case stemming from a deadly San Antonio robbery. As with Thompson, Foster, who had been the getaway driver in a series of robberies, did not fire the lethal bullet." He's inconsistent! He's arbitrary! He'll do anything for votes. He's the kind of guy who makes lots of Texans proud. They are likely to re-elect him. Why? Why not?

OBAMA AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS IN THE HEART OF THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY

I just spent a few days on a ranch near Del Norte in southern Colorado. It is a beautiful place. There was snow on the mountains and there were fish in the river and the locals don't seem to like Barack Obama very much. But there is a real affinity for Sarah Palin. You get the idea that these are the people - just plain old middlin', hardworking white folks with guns - for whom Obama will never be the president (therefore they have every right to denigrate both the man and the office; in fact, they seem for all the world like folks who would deniggerate the presidency if they got the chance, just like lots of those people who show up at Fox/Bill O'Reilly/Glenn Beck-induced rallies and tea parties, people who prefer their African Americans in the woodpile not the White House and always will). But for them Palin always will be the chance America missed. I found this sign in the middle of town. The drawing is better than the spelling.

Meanwhile, read In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and keep reading the good stuff. Understanding the boogeyman helps keep him at bay.

SARAH PALIN RESIGNING BECAUSE SHE'S A GUY?

From Alaska, the relative of a friend emails that the rumor among some folks on Sarah Palin's frozen  home turf is that Gov. Hockey Mom is resigning because she is having an affair with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. All well and good (and in line with recent Republican tradition). But in Texas there is a persistent rumor that Rick Perry is a "man's man," but not in the way Texans usually understand it. Not saying any of this is true, but, if we add one rumor plus one rumor, we come up with the answer to why Sarah Palin is resigning:

She is a guy.

In love with Rick Perry.

Face it. This as good an explanation as any Palin has come up with so far. More fun too. Besides, these are strange days, indeed, for Republican governors (the party of family values). As James Brown said, "This is a man's world."

HOW DO THEY SPELL 'APPALACHIAN' IN SOUTH CAROLINA? 'A-R-G-E-N-T-I-N-A'

It was bad enough when North Carolina politician John Edwards messed around on the famously cancer-stricken Mrs. Edwards. Now South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford decides to leave the wife and kids at home and chase his piece of Argentinian ass all the way to Buenos Aires ON FATHER'S DAY. Sanford is one of those scripture-quoting Republican true believers, a self-described "person of faith" who said he believes in "moral absolutes" (and I'll bet he believes in all of the "Thou shalts" and "Thou shalt nots" in the convenient way most of those wealthy and overbred Low Country South Carolina types do). He set out saying he was taking a hike on the Appalachian Trail, but ended up in Argentina because he said he wanted to "do something exotic." A psychologist I know said lots of muddling middle-aged guys confuse sex with something exotic and never make it to the bottom of figuring out what their real problem is (probably something to do with age, work, their boss, their unresolved and -- suddenly, frighteningly rejuvenated on some deep dark level -- relationship with their mothers. It's not that these guys want to fuck their mothers, but they feel like they want to do something to somebody and it feels like wanting to fuck somebody in the worst sort of way). Who do you fuck when you can't fuck your mother? Somebody strange (as in "get some strange"). Somebody "exotic."  So Sanford's exotic Argentinian was another version of Edwards' exotic video artiste. In both cases the poor bastards confused sex with something exotic and look where it got them. (Bill Clinton doesn't figure into this discussion because he had his own somewhat-puzzling-but-mostly-unexotic-Dixie-fratboy-if-it-moves-fuck-it-Lewinsky-esque interpretation of what it means to "get some strange"). I bet Gov. Sanford could have bought a lot of therapy for what this is going to cost him and he would have ended up in a better place than Buenos Aires. Instead, he did go to Buenos Aires and could only say when he returned, "I spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina" and a bunch of other crap. (Do these dumbasses ever think about what they are saying?) Well, cry me a river, but don't expect any tears from anyone else. Then go shove Evita into your dvd player, drop your drawers, do what you apparently do best and shut up about it.

Oh, yeah. Farrah Fawcett finally died.

Can you believe The New York Times actually put this crap on page 1?

CHRISTMAS IN JULY: JESSE HELMS FINALLY DIED

Jesse Helms died July 4 -- and not a minute too soon. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died July 4, 1826, and some obit writer tried to put Helms in their company. Jefferson, Adams and Helms? I had to laugh. It seems far more appropriate that Jesse Helms and Bozo the Clown died within hours of each other. But that's not fair to Bozo. There are Bozos and there are bozos. Losing Bozo made me a little sad; losing Jesse didn't. In fact, a Fourth of July without Jesse Helms was a July 4th worth celebrating.

A few of us held a bit of an email celebration.

One old North Carolina friend recalled returning to work "seething" after hearing lunch-hour Jesse Helms "editorial" diatribes on television "...against:communists, liberal higher education, hippies, disrespect for the American flag and anything pro civil rights" in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Before he was a senator Helms was just another redneck bozo, a sort of infuriating television joke for most of the people I knew, nothing more than a target for our jeering laughter. When he was elected to the senate in 1973 (as Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise! Surprise") it wasn't funny, and I am sure some of my friends who had remained in North Carolina after I left were more than a little uncomfortable when they realized the joke was on them and they were actually living among people who had elected the old bigot. What probably made things even creepier was knowing that their neighbors, relatives, co-workers and other fellow Tar Heels kept re-electing the sorry son of a bitch.

The same friend who remembered "seething," said his sister had called him July 4 "troubled because she could not find in her heart one shred of regret at his passing." He let her know she shouldn't fret about it. "I assured her that her feelings are natural, and healthy and show that she IS a good person." I agree. There is nothing to regret.

I did not leave North Carolina because of Jesse Helms - he was still the infuriating joke on television when I left in the late 1960s - but I did leave because I suspected I was surrounded by -- or related to -- far too many people who thought the same way Jesse did: hateful, small-minded, racist, white-trashy, Dixie-whistling, etc., and even worse, proud of it. They didn't talk about it on tv like Jesse did, but I knew it was there. So, I didn't trust them. And I never wanted to be mistaken for one of them. I left. A few years later, when they elected Jesse Helms, I knew I had been right all along: Jesse was the ugly thing that had been living inside them all that time. After he was elected in 1973, he became the walking, talking manifestation and confimation of my suspicions about too many of my fellow North Carolinians (lots of them my closest  relatives) before I left N.C. for good in 1969. Jesse Helms made it embarrassing to be from North Carolina, and he made it feel good to be living someplace else, no matter where that might be. And I have spent my adult life being someplace else.

The only good news I ever heard about Jesse Helms was that he had died.