A Molly Ivins Story

Regular readers of this blog will probably know that I am a great fan of the inimitable writer and political humorist Molly Ivins. I truly believe that if there was a political satirist hall of fame, she would definitely belong there (alongside Mark Twain, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and others), as the above cartoon by Jen Sorensen shows.

A fellow blogger, vorjack at Unreasonable Faith, just passed along a great story by Molly (taken from her book Nothin' But Good Times Ahead). I simply could not resist the impulse to repost the story here, especially since it concerned a particularly bad elected official from my own part of Texas (the Panhandle). Here is how Molly wrote it:

The seventy-third session (1993) of the Texas Legislature is pretty much typified by the following Warren Chisum story, Representative Chisum being the Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa who has added such “je ne sais quoi” to the proceedings this year.

The Texas Senate had a rare moment of courage early in the session when it voted to remove homosexual sodomy from the revised version of the penal code. All were astonished.

Their vision made its way over to the House, where Chisum promptly rose and introduced an amendment to reinstate the damn thing. The Housies were afraid everyone would think they were queer if they didn’t vote for Chisum’s amendment, so they did.

Then some scholar explained to Chisum that unless he reinstated the ban on heterosexual sodomy as well, the law would be declared unconstitutional. So Chisum promptly got up and did just that.

Whereupon we had one of the more bizarre debates in the history of the Lege, with assorted avant garde members rising at the back mike to say, approximately, “Uh, Warren, uh, suppose I am in bed with my lawfully wedded spouse and I, like, kind of misaim and wind up in the wrong hole. You don’t want to send me to prison for that, do you?”

Chisum would stoutly reply, “Yes, I do. It’s against nature and The Bible.”

So the Housies were afraid everyone would think they were perverts if they didn’t vote for it, and they did. Chisum then shook hands with his ally, Talmadge Heflin of Houston, in celebration of this double triumph, and the Speaker had to send the Sergeant-at-arms over to reprimand them both.

Because under Chisum’s own amendments, it’s illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state.