"may you be blessed by the god of your choice"

speaking of texas, not everything there is bad. a favorite musician/author/provocateur/jewish dude of mine is running for governor of texas in double ought six.

his name: kinky friedman.

apparently, his fundraising has outstripped that of the local democratic candidate. his platform is for, get this, "the de-wussification of texas". he has many slogans, one of which adorns the title of this blog entry. another is "no teacher left behind". the best ones are "how hard could it be?" and "why the hell not?".

there is lots of carping about the difficulty of getting on the ballot in texas and questions about how serious he really is. i think this comes mainly of the tendency of the general public to think anyone with a sense of humor could not possibly be serious about anything. this bespeaks a guileless innocence of the essence of comedy. comedy is the truth, dressed up in a funny bow.
all those blazing terrors that live in our hearts and minds set free with a punch-line in an attempt to get people to listen. if you laugh, you just accepted the trojan.

the relevant quote is from don marquis [thanks, uncle harlan]: "if you make people think that they are thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

another quote to further explain, from "mary poppins": "a spoonfull of sugar helps the medicine go down."

here is his campaign website.

he has merch and the sale of the merch helps the man who might indeed be able to restore texas to its ideals, whatever those were in the first place. since this man believes in them, i'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

at the very least, the whole campaign strikes a blow to the heart of the political establishment in a place that desperately needs it. it infuriates and shames those in power. the more that happens, the more likely it is that things might change.

and change is good.