[I only watch cable news in the office, in the background during the day]
Bubba is always giving me a hard time about watching Communist Cable News (CNN). Bubba of course watches only FOX News Network. He is especially happy about our local affiliate Fox Channel now doing a live full hour of local news three times a day.
He was so excited he called the other morning to have me watch. Sure enough, an hour of live local news with two anchors, a black man and an Hispanic woman! Cool. Wait, there are three hosts it seems. Who is that guy in the chair on the left there? Oh, that's Congressman Ted Poe. A very very conservative Republican who has a locked seat in the House of Representatives for Northeast Houston. What's going on? Gosh, they present a story and after each clip they ask Ted Poe to comment and give his opinion. There! They did it again! Hey, they are doing this for the whole show here. They read the news, do the video and then have a right-wing lunatic interpret it for them. I guess Blacks and Hispanics are not smart enough to figure out what's going on themselves. No exaggeration, this is really happening on KRIV here in Houston this morning.
Got sidetracked there. So anyway, Bubba heard that MSNBC was the even more communist and Marxist than CNN. It was not hard for me to make the switch, even after 20 years.
Lou Dobbs has been wearing me out. It became physical because when I saw him I would pretend to put him in a head lock and then smash him in the teeth until a family member would poke me with a stick to snap me out of it. I wrote a nice email and a snail mail to CNN management to explain they lost a long time fan because of Lou Dobbs.
Thus far the switch has been fine. It seems I have exchanged Lou Dobbs for Pat Buchanan. It seems Pat is always on in the morning with Joe Scarborough, and quite often in the afternoons with Chris Mathews.
I have been a anti fan of Mr. Buchanan for most of my life, though he never really pissed me off about anything. Sure he is a bigot and a racist and an anti-semetic but so are most people, and besides, he has a sense of humor and an easy ability to laugh at himself. I wouldn't vote for him but I would do shots with him.
Maybe I tolerate him because he is a Christian Bigot, which being in Texas so long leads me to believe is better than being a Secular Bigot like Lou Dobbs. Lou Dobbs who has no sense of humor and his independence - he was a registered Republican until he switched to Independent in 2006 to gain share - is fading fast as it looks like Barack Obama is NOT going to declare war on Mexico. And China... And Canada... Fences all around! I wonder if the China fence will go along our West coast or their East coast? I will have to call Bubba on that, he will know.
Bubba called today to squawk about Mexicans. I have to give it to Bubba, he is honest enough to not waste words differentiating their legality, Mexicans are Mexicans who should all be living in Mexico. Since Lou Dobbs went ballistic on this issue, Bubba now switches channels from his default FOX NEWS to watch CNN in the Dobb's evenings, which now happens to be the same time I turn off CNN for some Hank and Homer.
I must say, old Lou has gone singularly berserk on this immigration business. Perhaps as a child he was wrapped in a tortilla and abandoned at a bus stop in Escarsaga. Whatever the problem it's serious. In fact I just read that the main issues involved in all this; that illegal immigrants pull down wages, cause unemployment, are more criminal that average, appreciably affect taxes for services and are going to blow up Chicago are either lies or highly exaggerated crap.
So Bubba called regarding some hippies who disrupted a Mexicans Go Home rally in downtown Houston the other day. There were almost a hundred white-wing bigots, mostly middle aged women and whacked out Vietnam veterans draped in flags with nothing better to do, while about half that many kids held up signs reflecting upon that bigotry. Not much of a demonstration either way you look at it, but it was pleasant seeing some young people take to the streets doing the right thing rather than whooping and hollering in front of the Death Chamber down here in Huntsville.
So Bubba joined the Minutemen Border Patrol and wants me to ride down to Brownsville with him to man a guard post for a week. I might go. I need a trip, and knowing Bubba, the van will be full of beer and lots of chicken fried steak. And grits! What the hell, I can get drunk in a field and plonk at stuff with Bubba's guns for a few days. If I come across any Mexicans, I'll give them a ride up to Houston on my way home. After all, the influx of Hispanics over the years affecting the vote is the only reason Texas hasn't reinstated slavery.
Down here in what Jite calls Dumbass, I am considered quite liberal. I don't like George Bush, his war, and believe it is time for some sort of all inclusive health care. With that said I feel obligated to speak to Jite on his misunderstanding of what we Texans really are. I hope this list will straighten this Yankee out. And no, 25 years of living in Texas does not make him a Texan.
1) Texans love carrying around guns and shooting them. It's what we do, it's what we are and shut up about it or else.
2) Texans are not racist unless they burn crosses in Black peoples' yards or drag them behind trucks.
3) Texans enjoy reading about this weeks' executions, it makes us feel good about ourselves.
4) Texans are against any new hate crime legislation, there is nothing wrong with getting drunk an roughing up a queer or two on Saturday nights.
5) Texans love carrying around guns and shooting them. It's what we do, it's what we are and shut up about it or else.
6) Texans love to put all their guns in the car, drive down to the border, sit in a chair drinking beer with burbon chasers and plunk at stuff.
7) Texans love carrying around guns and shooting them. It's what we do, it's what we are and shut up about it or else.
8 ) Texans will pray out loud in mass at high- school football games no matter what anyone has to say about it.
9) Texans love carrying around guns and shooting them. It's what we do, it's what we are and shut up about it or else.
10) Texans will not tolerate any Yankee telling us what to do. It's what the guns are for.
Here in Houston Juan Quintero got out of his handcuffs in the back of a police car, pulled a gun out of his waistband, and shot and killed Officer Rodney Johnson and Bubba is mad as Hell! No phone call this time, instead a hard knock on the door. Juan it seems, was not only an illegal immigrant, but he had been previously deported for various misdemeanors. Bubba says if we had A Great Wall of America down there - electrified with gators in a moat - Officer Johnson would be alive today. Bubba is probably right in this case, so I had to change the argument to get him thinking, which Bubba doesn’t much like doing.
"So Bubba, not long ago you came knocking on my door in a huff just like this. Remember you running that light and being ticketed by that ‘uppity black cop’. Boy, did you rail against black cops that night."
"Its not a matter of racism Jite, its all fine and well for them to be fishing off our docks, driving our buses or delivering the mail. Its when they have authority over ME that my hair gets in a knot."
"What hair Bubba? And if that isn’t racism then what is?“
"Lynching and cross burning!” Bubba smugly replied.
"Well Bubba, you are all discombobulated by seeing this as a glass half empty when it's really full. For now there is one less black cop to lord over you and an illegal immigrant going to the death house. Its a win-win for you. Don't worry, be happy!"
Bubba knew, I knew he hated Blacks more than he did Mexicans, which was causing him quite a bit of mental anguish. So as often is the case, this was somehow going to be turned in to being my fault. So I got ready to suffer the bad end of the Bubba-stick.
"Blacks and Mexicans are problems two and three," Bubba told me, "Liberals are problem one. If it weren’t for damn Yankee liberals like you, I wouldn’t have to worry about Blacks or Mexicans in my state, my town or in my face!"
Bubba is my friend; we hunt, we fish, and we drink together, after all, living where I do if I didn’t have conservative friends, I would have no friends at all. So in his defense I must say that though Bubba is often quite unpleasant, he is at least honest.
“God is dead.” That was Bubba’s eulogy when we had him over for dinner the other night. After his third wife left him, he hasn’t been eating well and Flower has been having him over often.
“You mean Freidman, Bubba?”
“Of course, the God of Economics. What a sad day, we will never be the same.”
“You mean like 911?”
“Worse.”
“Worse than 911? Wow Bubba.”
“Friedman was behind Reganomics which changed America!”
“Indeed it did Bubba, it tripled our national debt in eight years, which has caused each of us to pay 20% of our tax bill on Friedman’s bad idea. It created higher poverty among children, reduced wages and was the precursor of moving tens of millions of jobs offshore. Bill Clinton jumped the Friedman ship, eliminated the deficit, and was witling down the debt when George began the Friedman thing again and tripled the deficit and doubled the debt again! What’s good about that?”
“My taxes went down! Friedman wanted to initiate a fixed overall tax rate at 10% instead of the 50% it is now.”
It isn’t 50% Bubba, its 30%, the lowest in the world. Federal taxes are about 10% of our income.”
“That’s a lie! I work until October paying off the federal government!”
“Come on Bubba.”
“I suppose you got that bogus information from that computer of yours.”
“Indeed, in fact it was from who I would guess you consider the Son of God. “Our overall average individual federal tax rate is about 10%.” Rush Limbaugh.
“Never happened!”
"I heard him say it Bubba. And then I looked it up and printed it. Here it is.” I handed it over. I carry it, along with my THIS MAN HAS SWALLOWED HIS NOSE cartoon around with me. “But that’s neither here nor there, thing is Bubba, everyone in America in the early Spring puts their gross income on the top line of a form and their taxes owed on the bottom line. All they have to do is divide the top line by the bottom line and out comes the answer, about 10%. Year after year after year they see it right in their hand. So everyone knows this 50% tax rate you and the Right-wing media push ad nausem is crap. Everyone knows it. So just give it up.”
"The best economy in Latin America is in Chile, where Alfonso Pinochet, a student and friend of Friedman’s enacted all of his economic policies!"
"Well Bubba, I will give you that as the last word. Friedman, the father of murdering totalitarian economics!"
Bubba and Me got together down at Mullet’s Bait to watch the election returns. We tipped the cheapest beer on Redneck Bay, mingling with the cheapest people on Redneck Bay. Our first shouting match concerned which channel we would watch.
“Mullet! Put that TV on FOX would ya, and have a beer on me.”
“FOX is out of the question Bubba! Come on.”
“So we have to watch this on the liberal socialist network?”
“Which one is that Bubba, the one owned by General Electric or Westinghouse?”
“The ones with the liberal bias you ninnynat. CNN, ABC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC…”
“Which are all owned by giant conglomerates whose only bias is to sell more Twinkies to more people who don’t need them. Here’s a fair deal, you get to hold the remote but no FOX. Anything else.”
“That’s fair Bubba.” Mullet decided tossing Bubba the remote.
As soon as Bubba had it in hand, FOX! It was only 7pm with only a few returns in and already Brit Hume looked like he was about to shoot himself.
“Bubba! Look at them! Tonight this is not the Right-wing Loon Network, it’s the Depression Network. Look! That guy over by the computer there is crying.”
Bubba finally acquiesced and got into a system of mostly CNN and MSNBC. But as soon as the camera panned in Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Bubba turned purple and almost pushed the buttons right through the bottom of the remote.
So we spent most of the evening with Wolf, the most boring human being on this Planet, and of course Lou who Bubba adores. Seems the big boys at CNN told Dobbs to take a night off from his rounding up Mexicans before we declare war on Mexico.
“So where’s Okra? I thought she was meeting us here?” Okra was Bubba’s Sister-in-Law who Bubba really didn’t like, but as an evangelical fundamentalist she supported his side in all our arguments. Bubba nodded to the right and from our stools out on the deck we could see her rolling down the pier along side the barely seaworthy shrimp boats stacked out into the channel. Dressed in flannel, with her height barely surpassing her width she looked like some kind of nut. A fuzzy walnut.
George Allen was ahead in Virginia and Bubba was ecstatic.
“My MaCaCa!” Bubba was singing to the old My Sharona song with Okra chiming in from the doorway.
“Not so fast you two. The fun has just begun.” Rack said as Santorium was traling by 20 points. This was a big hit for Okra, he was her man, and who she was already campaigning for as President in 2008. She looked so sad that my liberal compassion and forgiveness won over my common sense.
“It’s still early Okra, he may come through, after all, he has God, Jesus, Bush and Ted Haggerty on his side.”
“Rack, you are Satan always demeaning the best Christians in American. I hope you rot in Hell for it!”
“Nice seeing you again too Okra! ”
As the evening waned with the writing on the wall, Bubba fell into a depressing chugging funk while Okra rose to a state of Christian malice. After all, she ran the local Rick Santorum For President Exploratory Committee. Her dreams were being dashed.
“Every vote for a Democrat is a vote for the enemies of America and Satan! I can’t believe this!”
‘By twenty points too Okra, wowzer.”
“You, shut the fuck up!”
“Ya know Okra, can't you see it? What’s the difference between you and the Taliban? Why can’t you grasp that?”
“The difference Mr. Liberal Atheist is someone called Jesus Christ!”
“The name doesn’t matter, it’s the process.”
“Process is what we do to sausage, Christianity is what we do to gain heaven.”
“Which is no different than what those twenty assholes who crashed those planes into buildings were saying. What Okra? You have no need for 72 virgins. So what to you get? 72 I HATE FAG SIGNS to carry around to impress the Almighty?”
“Your day is coming and you won’t be thinking that’s funny!”
“You are unbelievable Okra, it’s like you are some clueless character of fiction. Anyone North of the Mason Dixon wouldn’t believe you even exist.”
“I exist all right! Me and the majority of Americans!”
“Well it seems,” Rack nodded to the television behind the bar, “Not any more.”
As election night wore on, Bubba drank, Okra burned and no matter how hard he tried, Rack could stop grinning, which only made matters worse. What a turnaround from the election night two years earlier they had shared together.“Well Okra, cheer up, it’s not the end of your American Taliban Movement, this is just a referendum on the worst President in American history. I am sure it will pass and soon we will have all you women in Burkas tongue yodeling.”
“George Bush went to Yale! Has an MBA! He is smart and one of your best Presidents!” Okra screeched.
“Yeah, Blue Blood Affirmative Action! Okay then, name me a President worse than George Bush?”
Okra began to turn purple ignoring the question. She looked to the television hoping against hope that Jim Talent in Missouri would pull it out.
“You know Okra, if Talent loses this one, which seems likely, it’s completely on the shoulders of Rush Limbaugh. His shameless treatment of Michael J. Fox was the dynamic of that election.”
“Michael J. Fox is a liberal who Rush proved faked his disease!”
“Gee… In fact my dear, if the Senate goes to the Democrats, it can be truthfully stated that Limbaugh lost the Senate.”
“Warren Harding!” Okra shouted ignoring the question at hand in lieu of the question ignored earlier.
“Damn Okra, you are playing right into his hands.” Bubba scolded from the pinball machine.
“So, you have to go back 85 years to find a president worse than George, and only one at that. You may be right Okra, and if so, guess what?”
“What?”
“You just rated President Bush as the second worst President in history. And I agree.”
“Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou!” Okra finally transformed into deep purple and rolled off into the starry night.
“So Bubba, looks like when we wake up in the morning we are going to have a House and Senate controlled by Democrats, hey?”
“So it seems Rack, but with all the corruption and gay sex, the GOP needs a time out to gather its forces and get back to its conservative ideals.”
“What in the Hell does gay sex have to do with anything Bubba?”
“The sanctity of marriage.”
“For Christ sake Bubba,” Rack looked around to make sure Okra was gone before he added, “You are divorced twice Bubba! And I covered your ass for two years while you fooled around on Mary Lou!”
“Special Rights! Queers should not have Special Rights!”
“Name one of these so called ‘special rights’ gays have or want.”
“To marry each other and be teachers!”
“Nothing ‘special’ about either of those Bubba, name me a real ‘special right’ gays want that you don’t have.”
“It’s unnatural!”
“Scooter! Your damn dog humps every male dog he can get his paws around!”
“God Says!” Bubba knew he was running out of bad arguments to justify is innate bigotry.
“I know you don’t give one hoot in Hell about the Bible Bubba. You are out of arguments. It’s a simple matter. You and yours are driven by emotional or religious intolerance, while me and mine have constitutional law on our side. The writings on the wall.”
Bubba gave up. He finished off his beer, accepted the Republican defeat, walked off the deck and sighed, “I wonder if my taxes went up yet?”
I went over to Bubba’s last night for BBQ and had to suffer through an hour of Bill O’Reilly. A full straight hour of anything on FOX NEWS is not easy for a person of mind. But I did learn that the main topic of the Bill O’Reilly Show is - no surprise - Bill O’Reilly.
“Damn Bubba, his head is bigger than Saturn! All he lacks are rings. Doesn’t that weigh on you after awhile?”
“One doesn’t have to like a person to accept their political views.”
“You mean like Rush? What a horrible excuse for a human being he is, but he and O’Reilly both are right on the money when it comes to politics?”
“Damn right Rack! You got it!”
“So we put their egomaniacal assholeness aside, ignore their abject hypocrisy, forget their disgusting private lives and just listen to them pontificate upon the issues?”
“Damn right Rack! You got it!”
“I am learning as we go here Bubba. It’s not easy. It’s not like you and I are from Venus and Mars respectively, but more like from Universe 2 and Universe 7135634. So let me see if I have this right. Both these clowns are mostly about promoting themselves, they each have sleazy private lives, they are hypocrites beyond anything previously known in either of our universes, but their politics of intolerance, bigotry, homophobia, greed, selfishness, promoting war, torture, spying on each other, and whose only answer to the have-nots (and even cripples now) is to mock and make fun of them. And that makes them good?”
“Damn right Rack! You got it!”
“Our relationship seems to be just the opposite of that, respect over politics rather than politics over respect. How do you explain that Bubba?”
“We figured that out twenty years ago Rack. The music, the fishing, the hunting and our shared sense of humor come before politics.”
“Really Bubba? AC/DC before tax cuts?”
“Well, except for tax cuts. That’s first.”
“Really Bubba? Taxes is IT? What about death?”
“Secondary.” Bubba said as he ladled more butter gravy over his pork hocks.
There are endless examples of Rush Limbaugh opening up the darkness inherent in the conservative heart for all to see. His rise to syndication was due to the notoriety he gained in Sacramento where he would read off the names of men who died of AIDS and hit the applause button. There is the giddy joy he took in the deaths of Curt Cobain, Jerry Garcia, and Christopher Reeves to name a few, and of course his coup de grace, calling 13 year old Chelsea Clinton a dog. Now it is making fun of someone with a horrible disease without apology because he doesn't like their politics. Bubba is Limbaugh's top dittohead.
“I mean really Bubba, how can you listen to that disgusting sack of shit? He represents all that is horrid in the human condition! There isn’t one good thing to say about him! "
“He says what needs to be said which no one else is saying!”
“Are you out of your mind? No one else is saying! Well, besides The President, the Vice President, the entire Bush Administration, the Well of both the Houses of Congress, most of the Supreme Court, almost the entire bandwidth of the AM Dial, the top news network Fox News, the top daily newspaper The Wall Street Journal, and from most churches for Christsake!"
“Don’t have a stroke there Rack! Burns your butt doesn’t it? And that’s the point, anything that burns a liberals' butt is a good thing!”
“The abject hypocrisy of the man’s character doesn’t bother you? A chickenhawk supporter of the war in Vietnam who refused to go himself. A morphine addict who promotes jail for morphine addicts other than himself. No children, three divorces, no church, gets caught with Viagra returning from a weekend at a Caribbean sex playground and then touts himself as Americas' spokesman for Family Values! A garden slug beats Limbaugh in the character department!"
“Calm down Rack! Look at yourself! You see why our harmless fluffball is so loved by so many? I bet he causes strokes and coronaries in a couple liberals everyday, which is a good thing. Rush is good for America!”
“So all you want in this world is to see liberals die?”
“No, what I want is my taxes to go down, and if it takes a few liberals moving six feet under, it’s a fair and necessary trade off.”
“And you have no problem sleeping at night?”
“Like a baby.”
As Bubba and I finished watching the Texas Gubernatorial debate, he recanted on his recent promise to pull a straight Democratic ticket come election day.
Kinky Freidman had won him over, running as an Independent, Bubba will have to push each lever separately.
Quite a complicated process for a redneck who has been pulling straight Republican tickets for most of 40 years.
“But Bubba, Kinky didn’t do anything but suck on a wet cigar and issue forth Texas homilies. In fact he reminded me of Dick Armey for Christsake! The only thing we know for sure is about him is that he wants to fund the state by putting video poker bars in front of every trailer park in Texas. And if I understood correctly, he wants to make cats citizens?”
“So the great tolerant Jite is a cat racist now? The bottom line you liberals just don’t get is why I should pay for your kids’ educations. I don’t have kids, let’s put the bill on those who choose to gamble, that is far more fair.”
This is the territory where we always bog down, his ideology so outweighs reason that there is often little point in further discourse. But one must always try.
“Bubba! They did this same video poker thing in Mississippi, the results were that the haves got a free ride they didn’t need while the have-nots ended up with the repo-man in their driveway and banker foreclosing their homes more than any time since the Depression.”
“Not my problem! You blather on and on about choice, they have a choice not to gamble!”
Once again I tried explaining progressive taxation to Bubba’s deaf ear, that the grand swath of Americans live on a teetering economic fault line. The middle class has no savings to speak of, they are in credit card debt up to their eyeballs, tuitions and energy bills are rising, as are the ever persistent emergency what-have-yous.
The working poor are hit even harder through reduction in every phase of financial help. All to allow the wealthy another vacation home and/or stock options. Meanwhile, the economic hardship you don’t care they suffer, is what causes so many to give up and fall into drug and alcohol addiction, crime, guns and violence.
“But its not FAIR!” Bubba shouted.
“Fair? You are invoking fairness now? Gosh Bubba, every time I mention fairness you tell me I am a communist.
Fair? Okay let’s be fair, every radio station who airs three hours of Rush must now air three hours of me!
Or to be fair, Kim Il in North Korea should have 8765 nuclear weapons with ICBMs to deliver them. Parity is fairness.”
“Its not about evil empires, queers, women, Mexicans or blacks. The real unfairness in this country is my tax bill, that’s the only place fairness is required.”
“So everything, the entire ball of wax, is about your tax bill?”
“Yep. That, and keeping Yankee socialist crap out of my neighborhood, out of Texas, and out of my country.”
Well, what can one say other than the same conversation goes on twice a minute on every street in America, dead ends.
Just got a call from Bubba, he said he had something important to tell me, a nice surprise he added. It was my turn to go to his house which wasn’t far and in the same general white area I reside in. He had the garage door open and was drinking a beer knocking balls around on the pool table.
“What news?” I asked grabbing a cue and a beer.
“I’m pulling the straight Democratic lever on the Seventh, thought you would enjoy that. As a prize for me, I don’t expect to hear anything even hinting at an itoldyouso.”
“I told you so!” I gave him what he expected, “I knew after 25 years of dogging you, you would come around!”
He pulled back from the table and leaned on his stick in that Bubba Stance. “It has nothing to do with your mindless liberal drool Rack, the Republicans have too much power, it has corrupted them and I am sick of having The Okras in charge.”
Okra was Bubba’s Sister-in-law, a Born again, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal member of the Religious Right with a perfect voting record. We had both taken to calling all such people Okras. Bubba had a troubled relationship with Okra in that he just didn’t like her. But they voted the same ticket every November, so he was beholding to her.
He leaned forward on his cue to make me understand.
“I have not changed one lick! I don’t want the government stealing my money, people should stay with their own kind, a kick in the head is better than a handout and liberals make me sick.”
After congratulating Bubba on his fine speech which covered all four conservative values: Selfishness, racism, violence and hatred, I had to ask.
“San Francisco Pelosi as Speaker? Ways and Means going to a Black guy from Harlem? Judicial Chair to a Black guy from Detroit? Possible Impeachment proceedings? Gosh Bubba have you really thought this through properly?”
Bubba went into silent cowboy mode causing me to back off for the time being. We had too many more beers and as I got in my car I shouted toward the garage.
“You want me to contact Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and sign you and your Bigaburban up to cart people from the 3rd Ward to the polls?”
Needless to say…
Bubba is always giving me a hard time about watching Communist Cable News (CNN). Bubba of course watches only FOX News Network. He is especially happy about our local affiliate Fox Channel now doing a live full hour of local news three times a day.
Thus far the switch has been fine. It seems I have exchanged Lou Dobbs for Pat Buchanan. It seems Pat is always on in the morning with Joe Scarborough, and quite often in the afternoons with Chris Mathews. 
“God is dead.” That was Bubba’s eulogy when we had him over for dinner the other night. After his third wife left him, he hasn’t been eating well and Flower has been having him over often. 
There are endless examples of Rush Limbaugh opening up the darkness inherent in the conservative heart for all to see. His rise to syndication was due to the notoriety he gained in Sacramento where he would read off the names of men who died of AIDS and hit the applause button. There is the giddy joy he took in the deaths of Curt Cobain, Jerry Garcia, and Christopher Reeves to name a few, and of course his coup de grace, calling 13 year old Chelsea Clinton a dog. Now it is making fun of someone with a horrible disease without apology because he doesn't like their politics. Bubba is Limbaugh's top dittohead. 
