Old-timers’ Day
They’ve been friends—and friendly antagonists—going back to their time as Cowtown’s most colorful ink-stained wretches. Half a century later, Dan Jenkins (whose new novel, Slim and None, arrives in stores this month) and our own Gary Cartwright duke it out over Bill Parcells, Ann Coulter, and that wealthy divorcée in the bar at the Colonial.
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I also watch Fox News, along with CNN and many of the “mainstream” networks. I read the New York Times and at least two other newspapers. While this overload of information keeps me informed, I can’t say it makes me comfortable, much less entertained. As for Austin socialists trying to overthrow your government, I wouldn’t worry. There’s only five of them, and they mainly hate one another. I’ve always thought of myself and most of my friends as moderates. We love our country but don’t feel like we’ve got to keep shouting about it. We also love our Bill of Rights and get a little radical when someone trashes it for political gain.
There is something to be said for the foreign policy espoused by your ownself and that character in Slim and None. But the problem with nuking the sorry asses of foreigners with bad attitudes is that they always surround themselves with women and children. Maybe Bush and his guys can come up with some sort of death ray that can distinguish between the a-holes and the innocent—in which case, I’d nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize, if Bill Parcells’s defense hasn’t already won it.
Jap
March 25, 12:04 p.m.
Jappy,
Ann Coulter is mean? You’re calling a writer mean? You, a guy who once wrote in a Dallas Cowboys game story that Granny Rice’s Four Horsemen were now Pestilence, Death, Famine, and Meredith. That guy is calling Ann Coulter mean just because she’s smarter than he is?
Listen, if there are only five socialist liberal retards in Austin now, who are those 100,000 burned-out, hippie-scum dropouts in outmoded, unwashed ponytails that were ringing the university campus the last time I was down there? I suppose their major mission is rooting for the sixties to come back, and I guess they’re too tired to do anything else. Like bathe, maybe. Actually, I’m not sure the sixties have ever left Austin, except on the golf courses.
Since you brought up the Terri Schiavo debate, which was otherwise known as a slow news day in my neighborhood, I have this theory that the reason her husband wanted to pull the plug on her was because he was afraid she’d wake up and rat him out for one thing or another.
Yeah, I guess we of the conservative ilk will always be puzzled by you libs, especially those who like to think they’re “moderates.” We believe in free speech for everybody, not just those who supported Howard Dean. Let me see if I understand this one position of you people correctly. You “moderates” support abortion but are against the death penalty. Swell. So tell me this. Did God send us Ashley Smith or was it a truck stop?
Ownself
March 25, 4:48 p.m.
Danny,
Your humble moderate here does not support abortion; he supports choice. Nor is he against the death penalty, except when it is used on retards, children, and the innocent, which puts him squarely on the side of the godless hippie scum on the Supreme Court—most of them Republicans, I hasten to add.
I can only speculate on the identity of that mob of ponytailed dropouts who terrorized you on your last visit to Austin, which probably was the sixties, but one likely candidate is the Young Conservatives of Texas. They seem desperate to reverse history. Or they could be Tom Craddick and his scurvy band from the Texas legislative budget committee. Have you gotten a whiff of that bunch lately? I have no information as to their bathing habits, but I can tell you that they regularly hose the elderly, the young, and the poor.
I feel only sorrow for the Schiavos, both of them, and the Schindlers too. If the right-to-lifers weren’t so fanatical, Terri could have been put to sleep quickly and peacefully, rather than dying slowly from hunger and dehydration. Let me ask you something. If you were in Terri’s bed, who would you rather have calling the shots, your wife or Tom DeLay?
I may be mean, but at least I’m funny. When was the last time Ann Coulter wrote something funny? (Jokes about Clinton and the three blind nuns don’t count.)
And, yes, I believe God did send us Ashley Smith. What do you think?
Jap
March 25, 6:11 p.m.
Jappy,
Choice is the greatest dodge since Doak Walker carried the ball. “Choice” means “I love you, Paula Jean. Let’s kill it.” You don’t want the death penalty to kill children? What about when they get to be teenagers? Better still, what about when they get to be rappers?
I actually visited Austin a year ago. Momentarily, it brought back memories of when it was everybody’s favorite city in Texas. But then it took me two days to get from the west side over to I-35. Maybe you should devote more time to worrying about Austin’s god-awful traffic than the perfectly hilarious Legislature.
No, you really aren’t mean, Jappy, but you are no authority on Ann Coulter either. Obviously you’ve never read her, or you’d be laughing so hard you’d be unable to type.
I agree it was God who sent us Ashley Smith, the greatest person of the year. Well, it may have been HBO, but I’m quite sure it was God.
Anyhow, if this is a Nazi-Commie thing we’re doing, I am already declaring victory. We dress better. The crush of the cap. The fit of the tunic. That incredible logo. Those lips, those eyes …
Ownself
March 26, 11:38 a.m.
Danny,
Generally, I favor euthanizing teenagers, though many grow up to be reasonably acceptable adults. All rappers should be strangled with piano wire. By “choice” I mean that I’m eternally grateful I don’t have to make one, but I’m not willing to close that option to some teenager who gets knocked up by her beer-besotted uncle. The arguments of anti-abortion forces, by the way, would carry more weight if they concerned themselves more with children after they are born.
Okay, it doesn’t get much worse than Austin traffic, but the last time I tried to drive from Dallas to Fort Worth on what we used to call the Turnpike, I ended up in Keller. In Austin’s favor, if you get lost here you’re still somewhere interesting. If you get lost anywhere in Fort Worth, except maybe the lower part of downtown and the TCU area, there’s nothing to do but get a haircut, hock your watch, or go to church. And Austin wins the barbecue and Mexican food derby by a mile.
Stalin versus Hitler—not much wiggle room there. But think of caviar, think of Pushkin, think of evenings at the Bolshoi, think of … oh, never mind.
Jap
March 26, 1:42 p.m.
Jap,
I’ll give you Tex-Mex, barely, but not in a hundred years does Austin win barbecue. Not when I’m sitting here with a platter of ribs at Railhead and on my way to Angelo’s for a brisket dessert. And I see I’ve just mentioned some of the reasons why I moved back to the old hometown.
This exchange has been fun, but through it all I can’t describe how stunned I’ve been to discover you’ve turned into such a caring humanitarian—so concerned about all those poor A-rab women and children our forces might accidentally kill in Iraq. I gather you don’t mean the ones who make bombs out of Coca-Cola bottles so they can lob them at our troops.
You probably were also shocked about the stuff that went on at Abu Ghraib, which the sap Ted Kennedy and your liberal media tried to turn into Auschwitz. I say the inmates weren’t in that prison for parking tickets and were lucky, all in all, that they never had to play basketball for Charlie Turner at Paschal.
I also see that your liberal playbook tells you to care deeply about all the luckless teenage girls who’ve allowed themselves to get knocked up by third-string halfbacks. Perhaps you can take some of them to the Bolshoi the next time it’s in Austin.
But you’re right about one thing: Conservatives should care more about the well-being of their children after they’re born. If they did, of course, they wouldn’t send them off to Ivy League schools.
Be well, Jappy, and keep typing. I’m just sorry we never got around to discussing Dostoyevsky and Mann.
Ownself
My Library
