Why Not Kinky

Well, you know Set, I spent a lifetime working for the government, never did a lick of work but then, never did much harm neither. All in all a pretty fair trade, don't ya know.

Col-lon-neh, "The Raven", I had heard. This I had not (though Houston's drinking is, of course, legendary).

Kinky's a real bad joke. Fortunately for the people of Texas he stands little to no chance of getting on the ballot. He needs 45,000 signatures in 60 days after the primary elections next March, and none of those signatories can have voted in said primary elections. If there is a runoff, he cannot collect a signature until that election is held, typically 30 days after the primary, but he does NOT get the extra month; his deadline of 60 days after the primary election date is firm. So he may have just a month to get on the November ballot.

"Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in Bed" is a classic. Can't say the same for its author.

We'll have a good laugh at Kink, and then hopefully elect someone who can govern. That shouldn't include any Republicans, given their shitty track record the last few years.

Yeah but isn't he a "Jew Hater" calling his group the Texas Jewboys! Yeah, I heard he is Jewish but maybe a self-loathing one. Maybe we should ask A2K "Jew Hater" Expert Lash.

So here we have a politician who's got the sympathy of D'Art, Edgar, Soz, Joanne, Diane, MerryAndrew, Dys and LionTamer, Sanctuary and Woiyo and Finn!?

This guy should run for President.

I understand Diddy's opposition to him and am sympathetic, but will sign the petition nevertheless.

Well, sorry to be a buzz kill here, but even thinking about Kinky makes me sick to my stomach.

As far as I'm concerned he's nothing but a dirty old man who drinks too much and smokes stinkin' cigars.

To me he's nothing but a leftover from the hippie days of Austin of hanging around on the Drag.

he still hangs around out there because the only women who are impressed by him are barely legal co-eds.
To me that just makes him a pathetic old man, and getting to old even to be going through a mid-life crisis.

Even if you do find him interesting, he don't wear well.

he's a bad, unfunny joke.

Bleeech.

It's not terribly important, but i have read the above in many sources, such as this:



For which, the source

He's funny!

He's totally un-PC but he's funny and he has a heart of moosh.

I've cited this a few times in pet threads, will put here for perspective:

[img]http://www.utopiarescue.com/images/epilog1.jpg[/img] E P I L O G U E On January 4, 1993, the cat in this book and the books that preceded it was put to sleep in Kerrville, Texas, by Dr. W.H. Hoegemeyer and myself. Cuddles was fourteen years old, a respectable age. She was as close to me as any human being I have ever known. Cuddles and I spent many years together, both in New York, where I first found her as a little kitten on the street in Chinatown, and later on the ranch in Texas. She was always with me, on the table, on the bed, by the fireplace, beside the typewriter, on top of my suitcase when I returned from a trip. I dug Cuddles' grave with a silver spade, in the little garden by the stream behind the old green trailer where both of us lived in the summertime. Her burial shroud was my old New York sweatshirt and in the grave with her is a can of tuna and a cigar A few days ago I received a sympathy note from Bill Hoegemeyer, the veterinarian. It opened with a verse by Irving Townsend: "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle ...... Now, as I write this, on a gray winter day by the fireside, I can almost feel her light tread, moving from my head and my heart down through my fingertips to the keys of the typewriter People may surprise you with unexpected kindness. Dogs have a depth of loyalty that often we seem unworthy of. But the love of a cat is a blessing, a privilege in this world. They say when you die and go to heaven all the dogs and cats you've ever had in your life come running to meet you. Until that day, rest in peace, Cuddles. http://www.utopiarescue.com/epilogue.htm

Oh and just the link that's from, Utopia Rescue Ranch, which a bunch of his profits go to:

http://www.utopiarescue.com/

Pdiddie and Chrissee, what do you object to in his platform? The PC and wussification ones are there to punch up his whole Sam Houston tough guy thing, but the other ones are pretty damn liberal. Leave no teacher behind; Texas Peace Corps; stop the rampant executing in Texas; alternative energy solutions; and bio-diesel. Pretty damn green/ libby.

Sshtt, youll scare Woiyo and Finn off ;-)

Right, right. Ahem.

"We will beat back the wussification of Texas if we have to do it one wuss at a time."

An earlier poster opines that Kinky must be anti-semitic (or a self-hating Jew) because his band was Kinky Friedman and his Texas Jewboys.

Ahem. If I may--it's OK to poke fun at oneself. Different to say those things about other people.

(As for Kinky being an all-around jerk, as others have written, I can't say, never having lived in Austin. I'll have to take your word for it!)

Kinky's Place in Texas History

"Texas political history is interesting, largely because Texans as a group hate politics." That's how Leoniceno starts his thoughtful post on Kinky at Blogcritics.



He discusses such Texas legends as Pa and Ma Ferguson, the husband and wife governor team, Pappy O'Daniel and Coke Stevensen. Then comes back to Kinky with this:

Now: Kinky Friedman. Kinky Friedman would seem to be an unlikely candidate for public office. He headed a band called, of all things, 'The Texas Jewboys' and penned such gems as "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" and "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" (meant satirically, of course). He self-admittedly spent a decade in a drug-induced haze. According to the New Yorker article, which I found here, Friedman makes it a point to insult whichever group he happens to be speaking to. When he is in the company of white-collar, college-educated types, he uses red-neck vocabulary and coarse language. When he is among red-necks, he uses larger words. Friedman thrives as an outsider: as a Jewish country singer in Texas, and then a Texan country singer in New York. From looking at Kinky's campaign website, it can be difficult to tell whether or not he is really serious.

But along with the humor seems to be a serious platform issue, alternative power. And the abolition of political correctness, that's really the heart of the Friedman campaign. Friedman is running as an outsider, just like Coke Stevenson and Pappy O'Daniel and Lyndon Johnson. It's the 'no bullshit' ticket. The 'no bullshit' ticket has found great success in Texas in the past. It elected all three of the men that I mentioned above. More recently, outside of Texas, it elected Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura.

No one is taking Kinky's campaign very seriously, least of all him. "I'm just doing it for the closet space," he has said. It obviously started as a bit of a joke. Then Kinky discovered that there were people out there who felt abandoned by the government. He's been receiving the rock star treatment, and with thousands of volunteers signing on, there is less talk about closet space and more about serious issues.

I think that Kinky will do well, and other politicians in the race will not be able to ignore him. Texans vote for outsiders, and they hate politicians. Kinky is not a politician.

No he's not. But he is a Texas Legend and it's been too long since we put one of them in the Governor's Mansion.

Texas is 50th, dead last in the nation, on percentage of students graduating from high school. One in five Texas children live in poverty.

We're #1 in toxic pollution per capita.

The Republican state leaders have failed five times -- in two regular and three special legislative sessions -- to adequately fund public schools. A federal judge just this week found the state in violation of an agreement meant to improve healthcare access for Medicaid-eligible children and young adults.

Let me clarify:

Texas made a legal promise in 1995 to do better for indigent youth on health care and has failed to live up to that promise.

We have a dysfunctional state government already. We need LEADERSHIP, not more goofy entertainment.

Kinky Friedman as an independent party candidate would have no mandate, no imprimatur and no ability to build a coalition to accomplish anything should he manage on the remote chance to be elected. That really wouldn't be a good thing, based on how much has already been neglected in this state.

Haven't Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzeneggar been more than enough to teach people the uselessness of celebrity governors?

I agree edgar -- Kinky ain"t running against a "Religious Right," but there is no shortage of posters who would perceive his candicacy as such a salvo.

The Kinkster is a Theatre of The Absurd candidate. So was Jesse Ventura and yet he was elected. So who knows with Kinky. I will vote for him, but I doubt he will win. Perry is hardly a superb Gov. but I (as might be expected) would hate to see some gol durned Liberal win.

Here in Texas we need a reduction in the property taxes and (at least as far as North Texas goes) a rational approach to highway planning.

The problem with a reduction in property taxes is, I fear the polititians would shift the burden onto the poor folks. I am dead set against that.

No chance Netherlander.

Of course you are. You are a wealth redistributionist, remove all personal risk, Leftist.

What is the burden that will be shifted? Pulling themselves up by their bootstraps so that they can compete in the 21st century?

If there is a financial burden associated with educating the poor and disadvantaged, please explain why it logical for the rich and affluent to bear that burdened.

Liberals tend to be those who earn so little as to be immune from tax increases, or those wealthy enough to bear the consequences (confident that they will never have to pay their truly (read: Marxist) "fair share."

Here is the fallacy of the Left's position:

Let's presume that there is an underclass who cannot possibly redeem themselves and who must rely on the the largess of the Liberal Middle Class. Billions of tax dollars have flowed from the Liberal (and Conservative) Middle Class to the underclass, and yet the underclass remains.

Is the answer really to take more money from the Middle Class and give it to the underclass?

Liberal HS teachers making $45K a year are apt to respond "Yes!" but that is because they know (subliminally) that the enriching funds will not come from their paychecks.

Now we move on to the less than 10% of American who are obscenely wealthy. Still, I have no use for Marxist redistribution of wealth, but if we have to have it, they can afford it. And yet is that where the Lefties aim their guns? No, not at all.

American Lefties know that they cannot, as much as they might like to, touch the filthy rich, and so they have set their sight lower...the Middle Class. Unless the Middle Class is motivated by a sense of guilt (post WW11 plenty) they are not about to lift up the lazy and the deformed. And thus the Left in America has no real power save for that significant portion bestowed upon it by the incredibly and shamelessly biased media.

When all Lefties have (at the minimum) tithed their personal wealth to the cause of enriching the "poor," then they may approach all of us Conservative Fat Cats with a righteous argument for "charity." Until then, spare me the hypocrisy.

This nation has shifted so that most of the burden lands on the poor, more and more. It is not redistribution to give the working man his due. The corporations take far more than they give. It is convenient to call a man who works his ass off every week of the year a socialist when he wants to get adequate pay. That puts a stigma on him and keeps him in harness the rest of his life.