In Your Face If You’re So Smart – Why Are You In Dallas?

by Roger Gray

In the wake of my thoughtful and eminently fair comparison of Houston with that overrated collection of Gucci-wearin’, militia-lovin’ nutlogs to our north (June 2001), I found it interesting to read in their daily rag that the Mensa organization chose to hold their annual convention in little “d.” Mensa, for those of you who have enough self-esteem not to need an organization membership card to prove you’re smart, is dedicated to the high-IQ crowd. Having the self-proclaimed brainiac bunch choose Dallas as a convention site would seem to make the case for my critics who felt Dallas is simply superior in some Darwinian sense of natural selection. To the contrary, it fits perfectly. Where else to host a collection of effete, snotty elitists than ground-zero for such folks? Dallas and Mensa – put them together and you get – Densa.

Livin’ La Politica Loca –

Former Housing Secretary, San Antonio Mayor and full-time stud-muffin Henry Cisneros has announced a get-out-the-vote drive. Calling the campaign the “Every Texan Foundation,” the Ricky Martin of American politics says he wants to register up to a half-million of our fellow Texans to vote. While the San Antonio boy-toy says the effort is non-partisan, I don?t envision a lot of canvassing being done in River Oaks, unless Hank has the hots for Carolyn Farb. Now Rick Perry ought to be easy pickings for the Dems in 2002, but so far among the announced contenders are some star-child attorney from Houston named John Worldpeace (no kidding) and former UT quarterback Marty Akin, who claims to have single-handedly desegregated the Longhorns and had more face-time with LBJ than Ladybird. It would be enough to make Ralph Yarborough weep.

How Can We Say Goodbye When You Won’t Go?

It looks as though the Repubs will be the big winners in redistricting if the early plans we’ve seen are anything to go by. There will be some logrolling and favor-trading, but some Dems are being moved into distinctly hostile territory. One who appears to be in jeopardy is state Sen. John Whitmire, and my reaction is – it’s about time. This craven, cringing, spineless excuse for a civic leader was the one who most significantly caved to a loopy right-wing talk show host and his little fraternity of goose-stepping listeners a few years back and canned the smog check program for vehicles. Not only did it cost the state millions if not billions in already signed contracts, but it only delayed the inevitable EPA crackdown and even tougher regulations. For that act of irresponsibility alone, this walking wet-finger-in-the-wind deserves the boot.

Media Watch –

Although it is akin to calling a talk show, where you will not win the argument, I was moved recently to write a letter to the Chronicle. It was on the trite but traditional Republican whine about the “liberal media.” My point doesn’t really matter, but the editing, and yes I know they warn you there will be editing, was on the level of a spell-check program. Simply put, it was the most artless, pedantic editing job I have endured since writing for Ultra magazine. No wonder they had to buy the Post, they couldn’t out-write it.

Elsewhere, our buddies at the Houston Press ran a feature piece on a fighter for “transgender rights” named Phyllis Randolph Frye recently. Other than wondering what those rights are, other than flipping a coin for restroom decisions, and why this has any news value at all, I was struck by one part of the article. Phyllis describes herself as a “transgender lesbian,” in short, a man who became a woman to sleep with women. Just wondering here, but isn’t there an unnecessary step in that process?