An Interview With George W. Bush (Audio) Them's Fightin' Words!
From East Coast eggheads to English snobs and French peaceniks, the whole world's against Texas. They blame us for the president. They call us gun-toting, abstinence-promoting, capital-punishing cowboys. They think we're a bunch of hicks.
UNTIL AMERICA INVADED IRAQ, it was possible to go through life for long periods without falling victim to the Texas stereotype. Trips to New York could pass uneventfully, without anyone asking me why I didn't have an accent. A New England foray could elapse without anyone insisting that I "couldn't possibly be from Texas," because I was familiar with a particular novel, furniture style, or menu entrée. I could get through a week in Europe without anyone asking whether I knew J.R. But as the war launched by a Texas-raised president engendered more and more criticism around the globe, I had to admit that this halcyon period had come to an end. This realization was brought home recently when I heard a particularly jaunty message on my answering machine. It was from a man I did not know, who had the broad, cultured vowels I associate with Long Island Lockjaw. Identifying himself as a Vietnam veteran working for John Kerry, he said he'd read an article I'd written in the New York Times about President Bush's military record and was looking for more information. If I could help him with his research, he continued, he promised to help me "with any of the materials at the three great libraries of New York City."
"You know," he said, "sometimes you might need a particular book that you would want to be photocopied and FedExed to you down in Texas." Then, as if he realized he might have offended, he added, "Although I know in Austin the library facilities are superlative."
For just a few seconds, I thought I'd been sucked into some time-travel vortex and returned to that torturous year of my youth, 1968: the condescending phone call from the war protester in the East, a mention of the unpopular president from Texas, a mention of the unpopular war escalated by the unpopular president from Texas, and of course, the implicit accusation that I was guilty by association for living in the pitiable wasteland responsible for it all. But my caller wasn't referencing LBJ, Vietnam, and postJFK assassination Texas; my calendar read 2004, the president was George W. Bush, the war was in Iraq, and Texas was the second most populous state in the union, with multiplexes, airports, DSL connections, and yes, libraries. "What are you talking about?" I wanted to scream at the answering machine. "Don't you know we're big-time now?" I realized I had instantly lapsed into the defensive reflex that is part of every Texan's makeup. I realized something else too: that thanks to Bush and the Iraq meltdown, Texas bashing has returned as a global pastime. It's not just America that the critics blame: It's the state that first elected Bush to office and the values it supposedly embodies.
If you doubt me, consider a few of the clippings I've come across since Bush became president. According to the Moscow Times, for instance, "As the world knows, Texas is one of the most polluted places on earth. And which Texas town is the most polluted. Why that would be Midland—the hometown of George W. Bush." Germany's Die Zeit had this to say: "In other states, the excitement for the death penalty has cooled off significantly, after a series of wrongful convictions were turned up. In Texas, however, the fear of executing innocents is still smaller than the outrage over attorneys who hinder quick executions with legal tricks." Even our history takes it on the chin. A review of the recent Disney movie on the Web site of one Mr. Cranky goes like this: "The Alamo is considered the central battle and primary rallying cry in the fight to make Texas an independent republic and, subsequently, a state of the U.S. Like I care. All Texas has ever given the rest of the country is a whole bunch of attitude and one-term presidents with a penchant for foreign wars. It's a state where toxins are good business, Ken Lay is a civic hero, and it's legal to stone your own children to death as long as you claim that God told you to do it. F— the Alamo, and f— Texas."
Maybe if our president were wonky Houston mayor Bill White or prim Kay Bailey Hutchison, we wouldn't be having this problem. But the leader of the free world is George W. Bush, known for phrases like "Bring 'em on," "Mission accomplished," and "America will never seek a permission slip." Everyone knows that he never bothered to visit Europe until he was elected, that he hates to read anything much longer than a one-page synopsis, and that he prefers chopping wood in Crawford to just about any event requiring a proscenium. From the vantage point of the Eastern seaboard and beyond, he looks like the quintessential Texas cowboy, who rides to the rescue with both guns drawn—when no one asked him to. Four years after Al Gore tarred and feathered Texas to advance his presidential candidacy, we're being drawn into another debate, this time about the fate not just of the country but of the planet—and we're not the guys in the white hats. Last year Ted Kennedy went so far as to describe the Iraq war as a fraud "made up in Texas" to keep the Republicans in power.
Our identity, and our mythology, are on trial. For example: "Bush acts like the husband who got drunk, kicked the dog, fell off his bicycle and had an altercation with a biscuit [!] and the morning after agrees to everything his wife says, smiling broadly, trying to pretend everything is rosy. This may be okay for Western Texas. It is unacceptable for a President of the United States of America." Though something in this Pravda missive may have been lost in translation, the implication is clear: "Western Texas," "cowboy," and "George Bush" are now interchangeable terms. Google the terms "George Bush" and "cowboy" and you get around 49,000 hits, many of which have a lot in common with a Web site that insists "Bush=cowboy on the loose." You don't have to cross an ocean to find agreement on that point either. USA Today founder Al Neuharth announced in May—under the headline "Should Cowboy Bush Ride Into the Sunset?"—that Bush's "cowboy culture" has caused him to "ride fast and alone or with just a few buddies. Shoot first. Ask questions later."
The scandalous torture of Iraqi prisoners? Well, that's how we do things in Texas: "A prisoner screams as an attack dog mauls his leg," begins a story in The New Republic, describing scenes from a news video. "In another, a prisoner with a broken ankle gets zapped in the buttocks with a stun gun because he's not crawling along the floor quickly enough. These aren't from the infamous video of Abu Ghraib prison. They were taken in 1996, at the Brazoria County Detention Center outside of Houston."
These days, the only Texans popular with the global press and opinion makers seem to be those with down-home accents who criticize the state from within, like Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, and of course, Natalie Maines, the Dixie Chick who told the world that she was embarrassed to be a Texan after Bush took on Iraq. University of Texas film professor Don Howard made a small, witty film called Nuclear Family that featured the debatable wisdom of potbellied football coaches and desperately ambitious cheerleaders, only to have a Washington Post critic characterize it as "the most revealing portrait yet of the political culture currently in. . . Washington."
It was enough to make me long for the days when Texas was chic, when the oil was flowing, New Yorkers preferred Luccheses to Manolos, "cowboys" referred to the football team, and people flocked from around the world to visit Southfork. Overnight, it seemed to me, the same qualities so universally loved in J. R. Ewing were now universally loathed in George W. Bush. I put in a call to someone who might be able to explain why.
Larry Hagman was on a cell phone near his home in Southern California when I reached him, just back from a trip to London and on his way to Los Angeles. The congeniality went right out of his voice when I brought up George Bush. "They hate him over there," he said, referring to the Europeans. "The guy has made all the world hate America. He's the 'Hitler of the twenty-first century,' and there's no kidding around about it."
"Can I quote you?" I asked Hagman, stunned by his intensity.
"Well," he said, "that's what they're saying over there."
J.R., however, is still cool. A new round of Dallas reruns premiered in France just as the U.S. took on Iraq, and Hagman recently spotted a T-shirt with the words "J.R. for President" on the front. On the back it read "Whoops, he already is."
People are crazy about the guy, as long as he isn't real.
THE CONDESCENSION, the facile criticism, the jokes, the self-serving, willful snobbery—they reopen old wounds that date back to another Texas, when we were rubes and everyone knew it and made fun of us for our ignorance and our cultural shortcomings. Somehow, it isn't surprising that our response to this latest round of Texas bashing is the traditional one: defensiveness in all its myriad forms.
Proponents of the war and the president like to blame the critics. "Europe is to the left of America," Bush supporter Jack Rains, a leading Houston Republican and an international businessman, told me. "They're not going to agree with a conservative president. They'd prefer a socialist like John Kerry." It is Rains's view of history that Europeans "always rely on America to do the heavy lifting. You just have to go over there and look at the graveyards to see that." (Maybe he was visiting only American graveyards.) He doesn't worry about the criticism of Texas because his barometer of Texas's well-being is the one that prominent Texans have always used to keep score. "Follow the money," he said. "No one is rushing to invest in France."
Those on the opposite end of the political spectrum tend to follow the precedent set years ago by Larry L. King and Liz Smith and become expatriates. The Texas shtick—the drawl, the friendliness, the cowboy boots for black-tie occasions—still plays well outside Texas, particularly when accompanied by vocal opposition to state-sponsored executions or the war in Iraq. "That's why I left. I knew this would happen," a friend who moved to Colorado after Bush's election told me, a little smugly, I thought. "What part of being a Texan are you proud of?"
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