“SHOULD BEING FROM TEXAS BE TREATED AS A DISEASE?”

Or, What Explains the Arrested Development of Texas Frat Boys?

Do all Texas frat boys act like Bush and Delay? Ill mannered, bullying, churlish, childish, arrogant, self absorbed, smirking, smart aleck, know nothing know-it-alls? At the recent G8 Summit Conference, Bush was caught on camera talking to the British Prime Minister with his mouth full (small social faux pas), cursing lie a dockworker after spending his Presidency pretending to be pious (medium faux pas) and grabbing the female German Chancellor for an unsolicited fondling of her neck (big social faux pas).

Don't Texas frat boys ever grow up? Bush is over 60 for goodness sakes.

Has something happened in the last five decades years in Texas I haven’t heard about? Bush's father didn’t seem that dissolute. Incompetent as President perhaps, but not dissolute. Did the Texas churches and education system suffer total moral and mental breakdown in the interval or abdicate their responsibilities in teaching Texas young men that being a frat boy is only permitted as a transitory thing, a brief goof off time before shouldering adult responsibilities, not a permanent lifestyle to be inflicted on the rest of the world for the rest of their lives? Actually, it is not all that welcomed by the rest of the world even during college days unless it is John Belushi and it is left solely on the movie screen.

Is it something in the air or water or local beer? Should we be sending FDA inspectors to the Lone Star Brewery? Did it come from all the head bashing during the Friday Night Lights on the football field? No, no, that couldn’t be it. Bush was just a wimpy “cheerleader” in school, wasn’t he? Someone who told others to go out to get hurt on the field while he protected his own skin from harm. I wonder what made him think the Texas National Guard needed another cheerleader during wartime?

Then, does wearing cowboy hats perhaps shrink the brain or the heat build up fry it? I’d sure hate for that to be discovered because I like the way they look. Many of my heros were cowboys. Men who were honest, worked hard and took responsibility for their actions. You know, the type of people Bush has never met except in a photo op. Maybe the Texas frat boys didn’t think it was sexy to act like real cowboys. Maybe they didn’t watch the same movies the rest of us did. Or, maybe they identified more with the guys in those films out to steal the grazing land, foreclose the mortgage or start another Indian uprising.

Maybe it’s just that the Texas frat boys when in costume are wearing their “cowboy” hats too tight to fit their big heads. Should we start treating being from Texas as a disease? Should we quarantine the state so it won’t infect the rest of us?

Perhaps it is a gender thing? I don’t know a lot of Texas women, but you at least certainly seem to be level headed worthy of respect. They don’t come any better than Molly Ivins who refers to Bush as “shrub.” My only problem with Texas women is that they apparently let arrested development Texas frat boys get away with stuff that would not be acceptable in normal human society.

On the other hand, maybe it is just a symptom of inherited wealth and power, indulgent parents, unrestricted privilege, failure to read any of the New Testament and atrophy of empathy, something that might strike anywhere. Maybe it is the senior Bush who owes us an apology. Somebody does.