1985 Bum Steer Awards
Somebody find that fellow Orwell. Isn’t he the one who said 1984 would be a year of ruthless efficiency? Instead it was a year of Bum Steers. Where was Big Brother when we needed him?
Everything seemed to be running in reverse. Clint Murchison sold the Dallas Cowboys for $80 million and still came up short; he was sued for unpaid debts of around $100 million. The Texas Department of Corrections couldn’t correct itself. Educators declared war on education reform. The year’s most celebrated romantic triangle featured a Houston woman who was the radio voice of Elsie the Cow. And the most vocal student protest occurred at, of all places, SMU and involved, of all people, fraternities. At least it was for a good cause: the boys were stirred up by a ban on booze at their parties.
Sports? The Astros were supposed to contend for the pennant. They didn’t. The Rangers were supposed to be better. They weren’t. The Rockets added Ralph Sampson and still finished last. In one day, Texas, TCU, and Arkansas successively gave away a surefire trip to the Cotton Bowl. The Cowboys lost their mystique, and the Oilers just lost. And lost. And lost.
Business? While the rest of the country was going crazy with takeovers, Mesa Petroleum tried to take over Gulf, the Limited tried to take over Carter Hawley Hale, and Coastal States tried to take over Houston Natural Gas. Nothing worked.
But it was left to politics to provide the Bum Steer of the Year—the successor to such worthy champions of the past as Carolyn Farb, Jackie Sherrill, Mike Martin, J.R. Ewing, and Farrah Fawcett. In a year when a sheriff got arrested for dealing pot, when Billie Sole Estes said LBJ was a crook, when Dallas pulled out all the stops for the most boring political convention since the Whigs went out of business, one man stood out below all the rest. He started the year near the top and went straight downhill. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting George Bush.
YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER, BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM THINK
Because you were a Texan, George, we were willing to overlook the publication of your dog’s memoirs, C. Fred’s Story, by C. Fred Bush.
Because you were a Texan, we tried to forget that during your debate with Geraldine Ferraro you said, “I’d sure like to use the time to talk about the World Series or something of that nature.”
Because you were a Texan, we tried to make allowances the next day when you said, “We tried to kick a little ass last night. Whoops! Oh, God, he heard me. Turn that thing off.”
Because you were a Texan, we were going to ignore your attack on Walter Mondale for saying that U.S. Marines in Lebanon had “died in shame,” when he had not.
Because you were a Texan, we were willing to shut our eyes when you hauled out dictionaries to show that Mondale meant “died in shame” even if he hadn’t actually said it.
Because you were a Texan, we tried to dismiss the Washington Post’s description of you as “the Cliff Barnes of American politics—blustering, opportunistic, craven, and hopelessly ineffective all at once.”
But then, George, you went and took $123,000 off your taxes on the grounds that your real residence was Kennebunkport, Maine. The IRS didn’t buy it, but we do. Now we know why you spent the whole year acting like a Yankee. Anybody who’d sell his Texanhood for $123,000 deserves to be Bum Steer of the Year.
THAT’S OKAY. THEY DISMANTLED THOSE TOO
When notified that security guards had found a bomb under a sink in Houston’s Federal Building, the police bomb squad quickly arrived to dismantle it. The security guards then said that they had reported finding a bum under the sink.
HE’D HAVE MISSED ANYWAY
With the score tied in the final seconds of a crucial play-off game against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Dallas Mavericks’ Derek Harper, thinking his team was actually ahead, dribbled without shooting while the clock ticked off the last six seconds of the games. The game went into overtime, and the Lakers won.
NO MORE PENCILS, NO MORE BOOKS, NO MORE PREACHER’S DIRTY LOOKS
State education reforms forced the Dallas Independent School District to end its 59-year practice of giving class credit to students who studied the Bible in Sunday School.
DON’T SCHEDULE A NUCLEAR ATTACK DRILL AT:
Stephen F. Austin State University, where seven students were treated for smoke inhalation after school safety officer Carroll Bonnette set off a smoke bomb to make a dormitory fire drill seem realistic.
THEY WERE JUST TRYING TO MAKE A LITTLE MONEY FOR COLLEGE
Four students at Lake View High School in San Angelo used the school print shop to produce counterfeit $20 bills.
IS NEIMAN’S THAT BIG WHITE BUILDING WITH THE DOME ON TOP?
Officials requested that “Washington” be added to the name of Dulles International Airport so that passengers will know they are not in Dallas.
YOU’RE FROM BIG D/ I HAVE GUESSED/ BY THE GUN YOU PACK/ UNDERNEATH YOUR VEST
For the fifth consecutive year, the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport led the nation in the number of travelers caught carrying concealed guns.
SHE WHIPPET THE TRUCK DOWN THE PEKE. SUDDENLY SOMETHING UPSETTER. THERE WAS A MOMENT OF PURE TERRIER AS ANIMALS RAINED FROM THE SKYE. DINGO! POODLES OF BLOOD EVERYWHERE. “BY COLLIE, I OUGHT TO BE A RETRIEVER,” SHE SAID IN A HUSKY VOICE, “BUT INSTEAD I’LL JUST SAY, ‘CHOW.’ ”
A woman driving a City of Dallas sanitation truck accidentally hit the dump switch and deposited the carcasses of thirty dead animals onto I-30.
ANY IDIOT CAN SEE THAT IT’S COUNT DRACULA
Procter and Gamble mailed information packets to Texas clergymen in an attempt to refute a persistent rumor that the company is linked to the devil and that the corporate man-in-the-moon logo portrays Satan.
“JUDGE, YOU JUST HAVE TO TASTE THEIR COOKING”
After two Garland sisters, Dorothy Watts Scrivano and Lawayne Watts Bancker, pleaded guilty to attempting to arrange the murders of their husbands, both men asked that their wives be put on probation and allowed to return home.
DON’T FORGET THE COCKROACHES
Houston restaurant designers Patricia and William Beatty told reporters that their techniques for making diners feel at home included making paint jobs look grubby, putting handprints on switchplates, and smearing yellow grease stains deliberately on walls.
HEY, HEY, RONNIE REY, HOW MUCH SWEAT DID YOU SWEAT TODAY?
Rock Against Reagan, a protest group planning to demonstrate at the Republican convention, sued to require the City of Dallas to provide an air-conditioned trailer.
OH, THAT EDDIE MARTINEZ
Addressing the Republican convention, Congressman Steve Bartlett of Dallas told the story of Eddie Martinez of San Antonio, who saved $700 in 1984 because of President Reagan’s tax cuts. When a reporter asked which Eddie Martinez he was referring to, Bartlett confessed that he had made the whole thing up.
I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT PIGS, BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE
Eugene Bonelli, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU, prohibited a student art show from exhibiting a charcoal drawing of pigs mating.
BEAT IT JOHN
John A. Norman of Houston formed his own recording company and released a single entitled “We Still Believe (Loyal Fans),” a Houston Oilers song with a Michael Jackson flavor. Sample lyrics:
When your Derrick’s running dry,
Hold your head and hold it high.
Pretty soon a gusher will be flowing through.
IT’S A TOUGH, DIRTY, THANKLESS JOB, BUT SOMEONE’S GOT TO DO IT
Elva Wilson formed Money Watchers, a program to help prevent Dallasites from over-spending.
LEGS!
After two women were bitten by a shark while swimming off South Padre Island, town spokesman Joe Rubio described the incident as a shark accident rather than a shark attack and explained, “More than likely he ran into her leg and got it caught in his mouth.”
“WE MAY BE CROOKS BUT WE AIN’T ALPO”
The Texas Department of Corrections agreed to pay $14,000 to two former inmates who filed lawsuits claiming that they were forced to jump out of trees and fight packs of dogs while being used as live bait in training sessions for guard dogs.
TO GAYFOREST
After Arlington police conducted a raid on homosexuals gathered in a nearby park, residents on Gaywood Street petitioned the city to change the name of the street.
WHY DON’T WE JUST IMAGINE THAT IT’S MOVED?
Dr. James Hall, a psychiatry professor at Southwestern Medical School, launched a drive to bring the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man—the world’s leading facility in ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy, and other psychic phenomena—from North Carolina to Dallas.
“IS THAT A CREDENTIAL IN YOUR POCKET OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME?”
Mike Blasingame, the mayor of Jacinto City, and John Lee Cooper II, the public works director, were arrested for using their city credentials to pose as Houston vice squad officers in order to stage a phony raid at a topless bar.
USE APPLES AND THEY’LL NEVER SUSPECT A THING
Tammy and Sabrina Mitchell were arrested after a Dallas woman became suspicious and called the police when they told here how to remove a family curse: take three showers, remove your fingernail polish, lay $2000 across your stomach in the shape of a cross, rub grapefruit all over you, and then tear the money in half and bury it in a graveyard at midnight while nude.
THEY WERE TURNED DOWN FOR THE ABSCAM ACCOUNT
Shortly after the Dallas city government was rocked by two bribery scandals, O’Reilly Advertising, in a promotional campaign for Castilla Properties, mailed plain brown envelopes to city officials. Each contained a $1 bill and a card from the developer with the message, “There’s more where this came from.”
COVER YOUR APSE
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth announced that its featured twelfth-century French Romanesque apse was a fake painted only fifty years ago.
SURVIVAL OF THE DIMMEST
The State Board of Education decided that biology textbooks to be used in Texas schools in 1985 do not have to mention Charles Darwin or evolution.
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