Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Bush Is Not A Texan!

14:12 / 15.07.05

I'm sorry about this, folks, but I have to say something...

People keep calling President G. W. Monkeyman "the Texan" as if it's some sort of honorific, or possibly an ethnic slur. His grating personality, poor grammar, and staggering idiocy are sometimes attributed to him being a "Texan". The implication seems to be that all Texans support him, and that anyone from Texas could be expected to behave the same way, because they're Texans, who are all dirty lying uneducated war-mongering gun-toting shit-kicking sonsabitches.

Just for the record, and in defense of my state, he's not one of ours.

Yes, he was elected governor here, and he maintains a home here, but he was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to a very old, wealthy, and powerful political family with roots in New England. The Bush family migrated to Texas to cash in on the oil business - in which W was a colossal failure, by the way, as in all his business ventures.

His good-ol'-boy accent is fake, and half the time he doesn't even get it right. He's a wannabe at best, a fraud at worst, and he does not have the support of all the state's denizens any more than he has the support of every individual in the nation.

I'm only saying this because every time someone calls him "the Texan", as if he were representative of all Texans, it makes me feel ashamed and dirty. (And why do this? You don't call Jeb Bush "the Floridian", do you?)

I was watching the news last night and there were some particularly egregious examples of this, with the commentators repeating "Texan" and "Texas" about once a minute, and I found it alarming. I don't want the rest of the nation to eventually start looking for scapegoats, turn on us and burn our villages. (Well, actually they'd have a hard time doing that, because, of course, we all have guns.)

I know that to many of you this is going to seem utterly ridiculous, and it may well be, but being associated with this dumbfuck bastard really hurts my pride, and I must protest. The moron may represent my country, but I'll be damned if I quietly sit by and let him represent my state as well.

14:55 / 15.07.05

Word to that.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

16:28 / 15.07.05

Just another reason to revoke Connecticut's New England membership.

16:35 / 15.07.05

As a fellow Texan and fellow Bush-hater, I must agree. Find a more appropriate nickname, like "Jackass".

18:31 / 15.07.05

But tehn yuoo are ofending Johnnies Knoxvile!

19:32 / 15.07.05

Amen. All the Texans I know can eat pretzels without supervision (and none of them voted for the Shrub).

It was one of the puzzles, one of so many, that teased me last November. I heard a guy interviewed on Radio 4 who was going to vote for Bush and his rationale was He's a working man, like me, and understands where I'm coming from.

He compared GWB to Kerry unfavourably because Kerry was literate, spoke French, and didn't affect the folksy manner. But, conversely, Bush was always just as blue blood East Coast as the loathed Massachusetts Liberal. How has this massive con been so successful? Best rebranding since FCUK.

Remember, Sekhmet, that many Brits have never been to the US and don't always understand how a Texan stands in relation to Americans from all the other States.

19:36 / 15.07.05

I take him at face value. Therefore he's not a Texan he's a c**t

19:42 / 15.07.05

My flatmate says we don't have to respect the man but we do have to respect the office. I always thought that office was a bit vanilla myself.

19:56 / 15.07.05

Yeah, it could use redecorating. Those curtains? Feh.

Xoc, you're exactly right; I'm trying to raise awareness and debunk the myth, not to be ranty. (Though I guess it came off a bit ranty.)

I suspect rather strongly that an underlying reason the Bushes moved here and started claiming Texas as their home state is because, oddly enough, being a Texas politician seems to lend one some clout at the national level. Bush Sr. was a shrewd one...

21:37 / 15.07.05

Wasn't complaining, S. You rant if you want to, although I don't think you were. I'll rant in sympathy, even though I am not at all Texan.

Lots of Scots around in the early days there. Maybe some of the extended MacXoc Clan were gallivanting about, fighting Spaniards and Native Americans. I might be more Texan than Wee George!

I suspect any of my Scottish kinsmen would have been crap fighters though and would just have got drunk in the saloons and fought with each other.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:54 / 15.07.05

We should turn this into one of those Lj not-really-a-meme-but-everyone-likes-to-say-"meme" things. Like, get the more artistically inclined to do a "Bush Is Not A Texan!" image and then promulgate it. (Thus undermining teh eval empyre with our invisibel majyx!!1!)

Hey, is there a language that BINAT means something rude in? I just feel like that should be a rude word.

03:34 / 16.07.05

It's apparently a word in Hebrew, Bahasa, coderese and a bunch of other stuff.

06:08 / 16.07.05

I hate to say it, but Bush really is a Texan. He moved to Texas when he was 2 years old (see this link) and grew up there.

I have a friend who moved to California when she was about 3 and has lived here ever since, and I wouldn't hesitate to call her a Californian. She is a Californian. And Bush is a Texan.

Not that being a Texan is a bad thing. I've heard the way people say Texan when they're talking about Bush. It sucks, dude. There are lots of nice people from Texas, and I'm sorry that your state is associated with Bush.

10:54 / 16.07.05

Fuck. He really is a Texan. Good link fuckbaked. Sorry texans.

21:57 / 16.07.05

Bush, Sr. also traded on being a Texan, though he moved there specifically for the political opportunities. Republicans go to Texas because they pwn Texas like the Democrats used to pwn Illinois (do they still?). It's a fiscal and constituental powerhouse.

23:04 / 16.07.05

He killed the shit out of some texas inmates.

23:06 / 16.07.05

( i thought i read somewhere that texas was briefly democratic until karl rove started some homophobe campaign against a female senator or somethin. can any texans tell me if this is ture?)

02:51 / 18.07.05

fuckbaked, while I see your point, I have to disagree with your reasoning.

He wasn't born here, and from that article it appears that he spent two years of his childhood in Connecticut, another year in California, and then left Texas at age fifteen to go to boarding school in Massachusetts, and then went to Yale, bounced around a few other states, then went to Harvard.

I don't think this is entirely comparable with your Californian friend's situation, simply because a) most Texans won't consider you a native unless you're "born and bred" Texan, which he quite plainly isn't, and b) he's spent at least as much time living in New England or DC as he has in Texas.

I still won't claim him.

And Texas has had Democrat governors, yes. Would have to research the transition for details though...

15:45 / 18.07.05

I see your point, Sehkmet. It does seem a little wierd to me that you have to be born in Texas to be a Texan. I would think moving there when you're a toddler would count, but then I'm not from Texas, so I wouldn't know. I do see the point about how he went off to boarding school, and kept moving around. That makes me wonder, though, if he's not a Texan, what is he? What state can he claim as his home state? How much does one need to move around to not be able to claim some state as their home state? I've never really though much of this, because I was born in California, and I've never lived elsewhere, so I'm damn sure that I'm a Californian. A Northern Californian, even. (I say "hella", even). I don't really think it matters much to be able to say you're from a certain place, but people always ask things like "where are you from?".

17:10 / 18.07.05

He's really not. Just so you know.

I always thought................HE WAS AN ALIENLOLLOL.

Sorry, I'm in a funny mood today, and a bit of daft lolloling usually tames the jester.

17:27 / 18.07.05

( i thought i read somewhere that texas was briefly democratic until karl rove started some homophobe campaign against a female senator or somethin. can any texans tell me if this is true?)

Texas has been Democratic since even before the Civil War and Reconstruction, primarily because of an influx of Southern settlers and in part because the Democratic Party in the South was seen as the legacy party of guys like Andrew Jackson. Following the 1940s-70s, the division between segregationalist Dixiecrats (like Strom Thurmond and Jessie Helms) and FDR Democrats (like Truman and Lyndon Johnson) grew to the point that a major split occurred, with Dixiecrats abandoning the party in droves for the Republican Party (Reagan's comment about how "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me" speaks to that rift).

It's only been the last 30 years that the Democrats have lost their grip on Texas to the Republicans and that's because GOP political strategists, Rove specifically, have found the ability to speak to Texan interests while the Democratic party has practically left the state behind. You could even see the last fringes of Democratic hold in the state when Dubya was governor, as a lot of precincts remained in Democratic majority, something Dubya found he was forced to work with.

It's changed quite a lot since then. Delay practically runs the place now (though I think that's changing too).

As for Rove's homophobic tactics, yeah that was more or less how Dubya kneecapped Governor Anne Richards, the sassiest take-no-shit Democrat I've ever seen, by spreading the news that she had hired "avowed homosexuals" to positions in her office. Which wasn't a lie. It just ended up being stoked by Rove into another culture war moment and rendering the Governor's protests ineffective. Dubya and the Republican party just had to coast into victory following that.

I loved Anne Richards. I still laugh when I think about her telling Bush 41 after he lost to Clinton, "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out". That old lady was a firecracker.

18:03 / 18.07.05

Texas is big enough to survive the Bushes, though W's had the devil's luck. He was the only second-term governor, for instance, though the office isn't very demanding or weighty, unlike in neighboring Louisiana, and thanks to the state's political history.

Any one of the following:

Willie Nelson
Roky Erickson
Stevie Ray Vaughan (RIP)
Jimmy Vaughan
Ann Richards
Bill Hicks (RIP)
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
Howard Hughes
Elmer Wayne Henley
Henry Lee Lucas
Janis Joplin (RIP)
Robert Rauschenberg
Julie Newmar

Any one of the above Texans, however dead, crazy, criminal or even fictional--or all four--is worth more than all of the Bushes put together.

This Texas moment has been brought to you by the Don't Mess With Texas campaign, which you'll remember is an anti-littering campaign.

Full Disclosure: I was born in California and half my family is from New Orleans, and I've been living the last 7 years in Amsterdam, but I still identify with Texas.

22:37 / 18.07.05

Texas has been Democratic since even before the Civil War and Reconstruction

Before the Civil War, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party were the same party. They were opposed by (dum dum duuuuum) The Federalist Party.

22:57 / 18.07.05

Qalyn, correct. Until 1828.