Democrats Continue Kinky Attacks

Spurred by fears that their own candidate could well finish third in the governor's race, Texas Democrats are still trying to make the argument that Kinky Friedman is a racist. This time they have gone back 26 years and found an old comedy routine in which Kinky makes fun of Texas' racist attitudes. It seems that he used the "N" word in telling the joke. Of course, in the eyes of Chris Bell supporters, this makes Kinky a racist.

Fortunately, I believe Texans are starting to see this as the nonsense that it is. Today, Bob Ray Sanders stepped up to defend Kinky against these attacks. Sanders is probably the most liberal of all the Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnists, but he sees this act of desperation for what it is - a brazen and untrue political attack. Here is some of what Sanders has to say, "Come on, ya'll. There may be plenty of reasons not to vote for Kinky Friedman, but him being a racist is not one of them, namely because he is not. He may be -- he is -- a lot of things, but not a bigot. I know satire can be hard to comprehend and, even if one understands it, hard to follow. But that's what the man does....To his credit, he doesn't backtrack on the things he says, even if it may cost him some standing in the polls and ultimately some votes....How you vote is up to you, but by all means vote based on some authentic issues facing this state -- not because a humorist refuses to be politically correct."

Sanders is right. Kinky is not now, and never has been a racist. However, he is a satirist who uses humor to attack the evils in our society. As an example, Kinky has a song titled "Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed". But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Kinky is not opposing women's rights, but instead making fun of those who do oppose women's rights.

Even the Libertarian candidate can see through this nonsense. James Werner says, "It seems like an unpleasant remark, but I have seen nothing to indicate that Kinky is a racist or a bigot. People say stupid things all the time - but they don't always have Republican attack machines scrutinizing their every utterance." Of course, this time the attack machine trying the hardest is a Democratic one.

Kinky's campaign spokeswoman, Laura Stromberg, sees it like this, "The latest political assassination attempt takes completely out of context a controversial word that Kinky was using in a 1980 stand-up performance to lampoon racists. Kinky was onstage opposing bigotry through comedy and satire. It's pathetic that the major-party candidates have sunk to this, trying to paint Kinky as a racist when, in fact, he was poking fun at racists....While Rick Perry was cheerleading in college and Chris Bell was being potty trained, Kinky Friedman was picketing segregated resturants in Austin to integrate them. Now that Kinky's in second place and a serious threat to the two-party system, Perry and Chris Bell have paid political assassins digging back 30 years through fictional books, comedy shows and song lyrics, desperately seeking to paint Kinky as a racist."

Kinky himself says, "...of course I don't want to apologize. When you're doing a stand-up act satirizing racism, you don't apologize for it....I've always been an equal-opportunity offender....You can't stop being an author and just become governor. The salient point here is the truth flows from the music, through the books...people that are offended by anything like that, they definitely got other choices, and that's a good thing."

Kinky offers no apologies. I'm glad, because none are needed.