| David Vest | |||
| The Confederate Battle Jug | |||
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Originally published in the Birmingham News Molly Ivins, eat your heart out. I always knew Alabama was better than Texas. Now there's proof. I'm sure you know who Molly Ivins is. She drives around Austin bragging about the Texas State Legislature ("the Lege," as she calls it). She chronicles their lame-brained antics in a way that makes people roll on the floor laughing until they think about going back to church. She does it all without any Buffalo Rock or Golden Eagle Syrup. For all I know she has never had the benefit of a boiled peanut. Lord knows, they provide her with plenty of material. An inexhaustible source of it. Somebody in Austin is always trying to take adopted children away from gay foster parents, protect school children by making gun manufacturers immune from prosecution, or give teenage girls a choice between begging Republican judges for an abortion or being killed by their parents. Why, just the other day, you should have seen the trouble they went to in the House of Molly trying to vote down a bill that would make it illegal to hunt while drunk. In the words of that other Molly Ivins, Mark Twain, "It was a heart-warming spectacle." No wonder she wears a perpetual truck-drivin', beer-drinkin', taco-cracklin' smile on her face. She thinks she's found the mother lode. Until a few days ago, she even had me believing it. But now, everything has changed. Thank you, Steve Windom. I have never thanked a Lieutenant Governor for anything. When I was a boy in school in Huntsville, I thought "Lt. Gov." meant "Little Governor." So this is a first for me. Mr. Windom, by the simple act of relieving himself under the table in a water-cooler jug instead of taking a minute to go the men's room, like a Democrat would do, has made it possible for a transplanted Alabama boy to hold his head up high on alien soil. Usually I only feel this good when Vanderbilt beats Tennessee (about once a millenium). First there was Fob James, overheard cussing in the Legislature in support of school prayer. And now this. Can it get any better? Back during the Alabama primary season, with everybody rushing to get their convictions overturned and defy the Supreme Court and everything, it was touch and go for a while. The possibility, when it emerged, that I might lose bragging rights to Fumbling Fob was enough to make me contemplate changing my name and moving after midnight. When you have no credence, what are you supposed to do? I tell you, only the faint prospect of future Governor Charles Barkley, Republican, flanked by NBA baby-sitters -- oops, make that bodyguards -- and publicly vowing not to let his drinking interfere with business -- kept me going in those dark days. But for now, I'm back on top. I can safely say that nothing this good has ever happened in Texas. Not in my lifetime. (Unless you count that time the Lesbian Avengers rode their motorcycles right up the Capitol steps and into the chamber and chased that old boy around between the desks, trying to get him to act right.) They can talk all they want to about how folks in Texas liked LBJ so much, they got up out of the grave to go vote for him. Billy Sol Estes means nothing to me. Even poor Ross Perot has been pretty much neutralized. (Although you can't count him out as long as he has those ears and that money.) At one time Texas may have been known for colorful politicians, but lately it's known for the likes of Lee Brown, the Mayor of Houston, a bureaucrat so dull he makes Al Gore look like Little Richard on speed. Lee Brown's headstone will probably have a spreadsheet on it instead of an inscription. (He may be a competent mayor, but how does that help Molly Ivins?) Anyway, when people think of Texas these days, they don't really think of larger-than-life figures anymore. Now all they can think of is George Bush, whoever that happens to be on a given day. The Bushes are like Wal-Marts. There's one everywhere. But only Alabama has Steve Windom. Long may he rain, er, run, er, reign. If I was a lobbyist in Alabama, I know what I would do the first time I didn't get my way on a bill before the legislature. Acting in full knowledge that it's prima facie not illegal either to curse in favor of prayer or to publicly relieve one's very self in the State Senate Chamber, I'd get me about a hundred good old boys from Morgan County and give them all the Buffalo Rock they could drink, and go to Montgomery and ask somebody where Goat Hill was. And if that didn't work, I might even demand to know why Windom's water jug ain't flying proudly above the dome of the Capitol, where the Confederate battle flag used to be. Great googly woogly. |
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Also: How to Get Rid of O.J. |