| So what if he supported the death penalty? I got the feeling that he understood it was a racist, classist institution that needed a massive overhaul, especially in The Lone Star State.
He was almost always funny, and in him I saw flashes of Jesse Ventura (whom I hold was more good than bad during his tenure in the state where they don't have Democrats, but something a shade cooler; Democratic Farm-Laborers) and even Ralph Nader. This was a guy willing to buck the two-party system and tell it how it is: that the Democrats and the Republicans were virtually indistinguishable from one another, and that neither of them has really been any damned good for most of the folks in this country for quite some time.
I, like any rational person, despised Rick Perry and figured that the Dems would end up running a stiff that came across as an absolute black-hole of personality. I was right.
Kinky was neither Rick Perry nor Chris Bell, he was an anti-politician, it seemed. He had the one and two-liners, he had the chutzpah, and he had some ok ideas. Some ideas, admittedly, like his stance on immigration, I was opposed to from the beginning. However, I reasoned, the governor of Texas doesn't really get such broad and sweeping powers, so whatever backwards-ass ideas the Kinkster has on immigration probably won't see the crack of dawn, much less the light of day.
Kinky seemed to be a strange bird, that was for sure, but just conservative enough for some folks, and just liberal enough for me. He had crossover appeal, and was polling well for an independent at the time, so he had me hooked.
When Kinky decided to get serious I felt vindicated.
When the newest Kinky-Toon was released I was eager to watch.
When Kinky's hordes came a-lookin' for signatures I signed.
Of course, at some point, Carole Longname entered the picture, and as someone at BOR put it, took all the steam out of Kinky's engine.
I groaned, but thought maybe things could turn around, and, while CKS has thoroughly imploded upon herself, I just didn't see the ground shifting monumentally in anyone's favor, especially not Kinky's...yet still I hacked it out.
Then came the courageous/politically expedient work done by bloggers on just who Kinky Friedman really was.
We all know the stories, and we've all read the offensive and lame comments dozens of times over, so I won't rehash them here, I'll just say that I was, at that point unconvinced that there was much anyone could do to prevent another four years of Rick Perry and his well-coiffed head of hair.
I had admitted defeat but was still planning on voting for Kinky because, hey, it seemed fun, and fun-voters are powerful in any election, especially potentially close ones like this, we could storm the gates somehow. I wasn't optimistic, I was just more mad than anything and figured my more important vote was the one I'd be casting for Lloyd Doggett in November.
I could stand Kinky not knowing too much about any issue facing Texas and Texans...
I could stand him being fairly conservative on a host of issues...
I could stand him ruffling feathers, mostly the sensitive feathers of PC Liberals who I feel have diluted the national dialogue on a card deck full of issues...
I could even stand his off-hand racist remarks (bad jokes that weren't too funny) because I realized the context, and I saw some semblance of social critique in one or two (others I thought were simply tasteless, pointless, and unfunny)
But when he suggested that Texas treat the Mexicans like Israel treats the Palestinians it made me think long and hard about the kind of guy he really is.
It was obvious that he wanted to build a monstrous wall between the U.S. and Mexico, modeled after the criminal Apartheid Wall illegally built on Palestinian land. There were obvious problems there.
But, where did he want to stop?
Does he want to evict immigrants that here now as Israel constantly does to the Palestinians in East Jerusalem?
Did he want to follow Israel's lead and bulldoze down homes and seize the brown-skinned peoples' property?
Did he even want to resort to midnight helicopter raids, collective punishment, psychological warfare, torturous humiliation, outright torture, illegal detention, occasional instances of rape, and countless instances of murder against civlian Mexican ciitizens here in the United States?
I ask because Israel does all of these things and more to the Palestinians who simply try to live their daily lives in peace and prosperity.
I asked myself these questions and thought that those racial insensitivities were maybe a little something more...
Now, I'm not sure, but I will probably never be truly convinced that Kinky's a racist.
But there are a few things that I do know:
Kinky is a complete joke.
Kinky has with no firm grasp on policy, politics or people...especially not what could help them.
Kinky doesn't think before he speaks and ends up speaking his mind, and his mind is pretty rotten.
On November 7th, I'll be voting for Chris Bell.
Any other self respecting progressive or liberal must do the same.
Come on home. |
