Richard (Kinky) Friedman Strikes Again!

Ah, another of my favorite Texans: Richard Friedman aka Kinky Friedman. I think he has tightly curled hair. Anyway, the Kinkster is a national (not just Texas) treasure. He survived the 1970s and the drug culture. He has survived Reagonomics all of the way to W. His sense of humor has never flagged. Who else would write a paean to Jack Ruby? I doubt that W could even identify Jack Ruby. He would guess: Precious gems merchant? If this be (fair & balanced) treason, make the most of it.

[x Texas Monthly]

Jack Was an Ace

And a villain, a patriot, and a scoundrel. Here's to my spiritual role model, Jack Ruby, the original Texas Jewboy.

By Kinky Friedman


ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963—THE FATEFUL DAY that shook the world, the day that caused Walter Cronkite to shed a tear on national television, the day that belied Nellie Connally's encouraging words, "You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President," the day that gave Oliver Stone an idea for a screenplay—I was a freshman at the University of Texas, sleeping off a beer party from the night before. Indeed, I slept through the assassination of John F. Kennedy like a bad dream and, upon waking, retained one seemingly nonsensical phrase: "Texas Cookbook Suppository."

It was only later, once I'd sobered up, that I realized I'd been sleeping not only through history class but history itself. I'd also slept through anthropology class, where I'd received some rather caustic remarks from my red-bearded professor for a humorous monograph I'd written on the Flathead Indians of Montana. I'd gotten an A on the paper, along with the comment, "Your style has got to go." But I realized that he was wrong. Style is everything in this world. JFK's style made him who he was. Even dead, he had a lingering charisma that caused me to join the Peace Corps. Yet it was the style of another man in Dallas that was to change my life, I now believe, even more profoundly. I'm referring, of course, to that patriot, that hero, that villain, that famously flamboyant scoundrel, Jack Ruby.

Like the first real cowboy spotted by a child, Ruby made an indelible impression upon my youthful consciousness. He was the first Texas Jewboy I ever saw. There he stood, like a good cowboy, like a good Jew, wearing his hat indoors, shooting the bad guy who'd killed the president and doing it right there on live TV. Never mind that the bad guy had yet to be indicted or convicted; never mind that he was a captive in handcuffs carefully "guarded" by the Dallas cops. Those are mere details relegated to the footnotes and footprints of history. Ruby had done what every good God-fearing, red-blooded American had wished he could do. And he was one of our boys!

Ten years later, in 1973, with Ruby still in mind as a spiritual role model, I formed the band Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, which would traverse the width and breadth of the land, celebrated, castigated, and one night nearly castrated after a show in Nacogdoches. None of it would have happened, I feel sure, without the influence of Jack Ruby, that bastard child of twin cultures, death-bound and desperately determined to leave his mark on the world. While many saw Ruby as a caricature or a buffoon, I saw in him the perfect blending of East and West—the Jew, forever seeking the freedom to be who he was, and the cowboy, forever craving that same metaphysical elbow room. I, perhaps naively, perceived him as a member of two lost tribes, each a vanishing breed, each blessed, cursed, and chosen to wander.

In the days and months that followed the assassination, as Ruby languished in jail, the world learned more about this vigilante visionary, this angst-ridden avenging angel. Ruby, it emerged, was indubitably an interesting customer. He owned a strip club in which the girls adored him and in which he would periodically punch out unruly patrons. This cowboy exuberance was invariably followed by Jewish guilt. Josh Alan Friedman, a guitar virtuoso who is as close to a biographer as Ruby probably has, notes that Jack was known to pay medical and dental bills for his punch-out victims and offer them free patronage at his strip club. With Lee Harvey Oswald, however, this beneficence was not in evidence. According to Friedman, Ruby was utterly without remorse over Oswald's death, delighting in the bags of fan mail he received in his prison cell.

In time the mail petered out and, not long after that, so did Ruby. He died a bitter man, possibly the last living piece in a puzzle only God or Agatha Christie could have created. I didn't really blame Ruby for being somewhat bitter. The way I saw it, he had actually accomplished something in killing Oswald. He'd helped one neurotic Jew, namely myself, come up with a pretty good name for his band.

Years after Ruby had gone to that grassy knoll in the sky, my friend Mickey Raphael, who plays blues harp with Willie Nelson, tried to get a gig at Jack's old strip club. At the time, Mickey had a jug band, and though he found the place to be redolent of Ruby's spirit, he didn't get the gig. "I thought you guys liked jugs," Mickey told the manager.

Thus is the legacy of one little man determined to take the law into his own little hand. And so they will go together into history, a pair of Jacks, one dealt a fatal blow in the prime of his life, the other dealt from the bottom of the deck; one remembered with the passion of an eternal flame, the other all but forgotten. Friedman notes that Ruby wept for Kennedy. Chet Flippo, in his definitive book Your Cheatin' Heart, tells of Ruby's friendship and loyalty a decade earlier toward another one of life's great death-bound passengers, Hank Williams. Ruby, according to Flippo, was one of the last promoters to continue to book Hank as the legend drunkenly, tragically struggled to get out of this world alive. He was also one of the few human beings on the planet who knew Hank Williams and spoke Yiddish.

Was Ruby a slightly weather-beaten patriotic hero? Was he a sleazeball with a heart of gold? Was he, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, just another Joseph, following a star, trying to find a manger in Dallas? My old pal Vaughn Meader, who in the early sixties recorded the hugely successful The First Family album satirizing JFK, probably expressed it best. After flying for most of that tragic day, oblivious to the news, he got into a taxi at the airport in Milwaukee. The driver asked him, "Did you hear about the president getting shot?" "No," said Vaughn. "How does it go?"

© Copyright 2003 Texas Monthly

Viagra: W & the Rest of Us

W doesn't need Viagra (or any of its emerging competitors). He does what he does best to us without chemicals. It comes naturally to him. Just today, the Bushies have absolved the electrical utilities of the obligation to stifle air pollution. W says, "What's that smell? It's money, boy!" When I associate a smell with W and his minions, it sure ain't money! I wonder if W has ED? W was an owner of the Texas Rangers. Rafael Palmeiro (1b) is a Viagra pitchman. So was Bob Dole. Is W far behind? Sumbitch will do anything for an easy buck. That sums up his life: an easy buck. O, well. Viagra is a myth, too. There is no free lunch (Barry Commoner). If you want to dance, you have to pay the fiddler. (Eugene — Big Daddy — Lipscomb) If this be (fair & balanced) babble, so be it.

[x The Independent]

How was it for you? Viagra can leave a trail of ruined lives and shattered hopes, says expert

By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs Correspondent

27 August 2003

When it was launched five years ago, Viagra was hailed as a wonder drug that would revolutionise the sex lives of millions of men and women.

The diamond-shaped pills became a bestselling brand and a designer accessory favoured by everyone from Robbie Williams to the former US presidential candidate Bob Dole.

But a new book by a leading American doctor reveals the anti-impotence drug is failing to rise to the occasion. Dr Abraham Morgentaler, a urologist at Harvard Medical School who helped with the implementation of Viagra, says it is causing more problems for some couples than it solves.

His book, The Viagra Myth, reveals for the first time the drug's popularity is waning as it leaves a trail of broken relationships and shattered expectations in its wake.

He says: "The Viagra Myth has less to do with the effectiveness of the medication than with our cultural propensity to look for the easy fix. Many of my male patients, together with their partners, have come to realise that finally achieving a great erection does not solve their relationship problems. In fact, it has frequently made them worse."

The book, to be published in November, discloses less than half of prescriptions for Viagra are refilled, meaning the majority of men who take the drug are not coming back for more.

According to Dr Morgentaler, Viagra is triggering a male sexual revolution in a similar way the Pill did for women during the 60s.

But far from liberating men from impotence, it is forcing them to confront previously hidden emotional problems in relationships - and many are opting to return to the physical frustration of the bedroom rather than face other issues.

Dr Morgentaler, president of the Men's Health Forum in the US, says he has seen male patients who have decided to stop taking Viagra because it has increased their partner's expectations of them between the sheets. Others are taking Viagra - then leaving their partners after realising that while they may now be able to have sex, they are simply not attracted to their wives or girlfriends.

According to Dr Morgentaler, the drug has been hailed as a quick-fix cure-all when it may be anything but. It seems our love affair with Viagra has become a flop - and it all began so romantically.

Like many scientific breakthroughs, Viagra was discovered by mistake. In the late 1990s, researchers for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer were concentrating on developing a drug to beat heart disease. They began work with an active ingredient called sildenafil, which they hoped would help to increase the blood flow through the blocked arteries caused by heart disease.

Early trials were started, with volunteer patients given either sildenafil or a dummy, placebo pill. But the results were disappointing - the drug seemed to have no effect on blocked arteries. The researchers decided to scrap the trials and asked the volunteers to return the unused pills.

Then something strange happened - the men in the trial who had been given the "real" sildenafil were curiously reluctant to hand back the drug. When questioned, they admitted that while the pills had done nothing for their heart problems, they had reached another part of their body entirely - with incredible effects.

Patients who had previously experienced sexual problems because of their heart disease reported that, within an hour of taking sildenafil, they were rising to the occasion with no problems.

From that moment, Pfizer knew that it had a hit on its hands. At the time, erectile dysfunction (ED), as impotence is termed in medicine, was a love problem that dared not speak its name.

One in ten men in the UK was estimated to suffer from ED, but few were willing to go to their GP, partly because of the dearth of effective treatments.

Men who did ask for help had to cope with the indignity of cumbersome vacuum pumps and variations on the rubber band, or resort to a plethora of quack creams, potions and ointments available on mail order.

Viagra, as Pfizer called its new wonder drug, changed all that. From the moment it was launched in the US in January 1998, it became a bestseller. It not only transformed the treatment of impotence - it made the condition something to be talked about in the open.

Pfizer scored a coup when it signed up Mr Dole to star in television commercials for Viagra. The Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner gave the drug untold publicity when he revealed that he regularly took it. Viagra became one of the first drugs to enter the English language as a global brand almost equal to Coca-Cola.

When Nicole Kidman stripped off in a West End play, her performance was described as "pure theatrical Viagra". Such is its potency that recent studies have claimed it can work on everything from limp plants to sex-shy female pandas.

When it was licensed for use in the UK in March 1998, it caused a national debate over whether such "lifestyle" drugs should be available on the NHS.

Amid dire predictions that Viagra could cost the health service £1bn a year, the Health Secretary at the time, Frank Dobson, slapped a restriction on all impotence treatments, which limited them to men with specific medical conditions.

Overnight, impotence went from being something that wasn't talked about but which most men could get help for, to a condition that was a national talking point and only a minority could be treated for.

Despite the restrictions, doctors and patients have found ways to get their hands on the little blue pills. Since Viagra was launched, prescriptions for impotence treatments have doubled.

More than a million NHS prescriptions were written for the condition last year - and while there is no official breakdown, the overwhelming majority of them would be for Viagra. NHS recipients are restricted to four pills a month.

Millions more people in Britain are buying the drug over the Internet, sometimes for as much as £10 a pill. The drug makes more than a £2bn a year but its dominance in the market is being threatened by the emergence of similar drugs.

More worryingly, Dr Morgentaler says the hype surrounding Viagra is being replaced with disillusionment that it has not proved to be a panacea for problems in the bedroom. His book recounts tales of men who decide to stop taking the pills because once the physical problem has been cured, their partners have become more sexually demanding.

HOW THE BLUE PILL HAS CHANGED ONE MAN'S LIFE

By Danielle Demetriou

When Tony Wilkinson tentatively swallowed a Viagra pill four years ago, he had little idea that it would be the first of many that would transform his life.

Having endured years of involuntary abstention from sex due to injuries sustained in a fall, the drug finally brought the satisfactory love life that had eluded him and his wife, Kathy.

But while Mr Wilkinson is the text-book candidate for Viagra, which he obtains on the NHS, he has become increasingly concerned at the growing number of men who take the drug for the wrong reasons.

"There are more and more people who seem to be turning to the drug to sort out all their problems," said Mr Wilkinson, 51, from Camberwell, south-east London. "It has been called a magic blue pill that can transform your life and it certainly has changed mine.

"But I can see that there are lots of people who take it thinking it will sort out a relationship that may not be right in the first place. It may be magic for certain people, in terms of the physical effects, but it's not going to solve every single problem if there are other issues to deal with too."

Mr Wilkinson was working as an industrial door-fitter when he suffered serious injuries from a fall that led to impotency.

While he and his wife tried a series of remedies, ranging from injections to pumps, he failed to find a satisfactory method until he was prescribed his first Viagra in 1999.

"I haven't looked back since I took my first pill," he said. "As far as I'm concerned it's the best thing since sliced bread. It means me and Kathy got our love life back."

But Mr Wilkinson remains acutely aware of its limits.

While he takes the drug within a stable, loving relationship, he voiced concerns that some men may be turning to the drug for the wrong reasons, with negative consequences.

"As someone whose life was totally transformed by it, and who needed something like this very badly, it does make me angry that there are people who are taking it for the wrong reasons," he said.

"It does make me angry that there are some idiots who take if for so-called recreational reasons. I think it's a bloody stupid thing to do when there are people who really need it.

"People shouldn't see it as a magic pill that will solve everything. It only works in the right situations."

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Internet Hoaxes & Hoaxbusters

Hoaxbusters

A very reliable source (at Michigan State University) recommended this site. All of us have received panicky e-mail friend and foe alike that decries the virus or that worm or this trojan horse. Get to the bottom of it at Hoaxbusters. You heard it here. If this be (fair & balanced) bogus information, so be it.

The Nedster in OH sent me the above Doonesbury from a few Sundays past. The Nedster is hinting (I think) that I am a slacker like Zipper Harris is this installment. Garry Trudeau is another one of my favorites. Amazingly, the Amarillo fishwrap carries Doonesbury, but it appears on the editorial page, not the comics section. Don't want to corrupt the minds of the young. Unlike ol' Zip, I maintain a Blog to vent and strike back at the forces of darkness in DC, Austin, and right here in Amarillo. BTW, Tom Terrific signed his last message to me as Venustiano Carranza (he won), the ultimate victor in the power struggle after Porfirio Diaz hit the road into exile. The Nedster started doing this last summer. He signed e-mail as Señor Wences and Pancho Segura and Pedro Martinez and the like. I signed a reply to Tom Terrific as Emiliano Zapata. I guess I should have added (he lost). In any event, the wacky signatures indicate to me that the Nedster thinks that everyone in Texas is a mestizo. That will be the case by 2050, but not in 2003. Speaking of Spanish, W claims to be bilingual. In truth, he's bi-ignorant. If this be (fair & balanced) treason, make the most of it.

Reflections on Teaching Loads & Other Stuff

Last eve, I received a lengthy post from Tom Terrific in WI. Tom mocked my teaching load. Hell, no one can do justice to more than 3 courses, let along 5. Of course, the High Poo Bahs at Amarillo College entertained the idea of 6 (SIX) courses constituting a full load each term. If I maintain that students must put in 3 hours of study for each hour in class, I ought to be doing the same thing (in all truth). So, a student carrying a 15-hour load must spend 45 hours in preparation that week. 45 + 15 = 60 hours on coursework each week. Hell, most of 'em won't spend 60 hours during the entire semester! Now, if I teach 15 hours, that means I should be spending 60-hour weeks. If I taught 6 courses per week, that would mean a 72-hour week. That is why the flagship institutions do not ask any of their faculty to teach 5 courses per week. Is that because the institutions want to perpetuate sloth? Hell, no. They expect some quality in the classroom. Why not go to 6 classes at Amarillo College? It can't get any worse or inept. One of our department chairs issued a handout this term (I saw it in a photocopy machine) that used you're for your. From the same department, I saw a class handout on lab safety from another ace. "Maintain a safe distance from the Bunsen burner, otherwise your cloths might catch on fire." Might as well let 'em teach 6 courses. We have an academic dean who wrote "Don't loose something or other." to an acquaintance. Enough of this (fair & balanced) treason. Read what is going down in WI.

Neil,

I can't believe that Armadillo College would give you five classes! I think it's the old "let's give the old liberal a heavy load so then he'll have to retire, then we can save big bucks by hiring some young stud muffin at $5.50 per hr. and Prof. Sapper can devote his life to 'Rants and Raves.'"

I checked the U.S. NEWS college rankings carefully and didn't find Armadillo State anywhere, the poll must have been an oversight. Maybe your new Prez. will straighten things out. In fact, for a state as big as Texas, I'm surprised Rice was the only Top 50 school and U.T. and A&M were in the next 50. Maybe Baylor was in the mix too. I"m sure with the new "no student left out of college" policy they've adopted things will improve -- NOT.

The cheesehead state only had two in the major university standings, UW- Mad. City was 32 (third in the Big 10 again) and Marquette on the second page. I was proud to see my alma mater was in the Top 10 in PhD institutions. Makes me happy my alumni donations are paying off. The other state educational institution that sucked major bucks out of the Robertson family in the last 10 years, Beloit College, ranked 52 among Liberal Arts Colleges.

The "really important" college rankings begin this weekend when the Badgers play the Mountaineers to kick-off the college "fubawl" season. The big question is: will Jim Sorgi ( 0 - 5 in five starts) be able to win a game as successor to Brooks Bollinger (the surprise of the Jets training camp)? or will Anthony Davis be able to pass Ron Dayne as the all-time rushing leader? or will they be able to play defense? or can Barry Alvarez succeed as coach and Athletic Director? Stay tuned Badger fans.

My Super Bowl prediction is . . . the Packers WILL NOT BE IN IT.

Sandi is back at work this week so I'm adjusting to the lack of hyper-activity around the house. Next week I'm staying up at the cabin and fishing for the four days after Labor Day. I'm determined to catch a big muskie this fall.

It's drier than an armadillo's turd around here right now. We're having the worst drought since 1988. Makes me glad I"m not a farmer and happy I don't have to mow the lawn.

Make sure you're "fair and balanced" when you grade your students.

Venustiano Carranza (he won)

© Copyright 2003 Tom Terrific

Wish I May, Wish I Might....

If only. W has no cushion at this point? O, he'll wave the bloody shirt in NYC when he is renominated. Look at the crap his Web site is peddling. Most yokels think he is a war hero. The one thing he can't control is all Osama's boys now in Iraq. They took on the Red Army in Afghanistan and they're bleeding us daily in Baghdad. BTW, where in hell is Osama bin Laden? 5 will get you ten that he is back home in Riyadh. If our people can't find Saddam, what makes anyone think that Osama can't be underground in Saudi Arabia? If this be (fair & balanced) treason, make the most of it.

[x HNN]

Hot Topics


Could Iraq Cost Bush the Election?

Last week historian Allan Lichtman told USA Today that it's rare for a president to lose an election over an issue related to foreign policy. Lichtman, who's accurately predicted many presidential elections based on a careful analysis of the critical factors that shape American politics — factors he refers to as "keys"^* — argued that Bush is favored to win re-election. He added, however, "it could become quicksand if anything happens to the economy. He has no cushion at this point."

What do you think? Could Iraq cost Bush the presidency? Can you think of any foreign policy issues that cost presidents re-election?

^*Allan Lichtman, The Keys to the White House: A Surefire Guide to Predicting the Next President (Madison Books, 1996).

Copyright © 2003 History News Network

Everything-The-Bushies-Ain't

Ol' P. M. has defined my kind of people: Everything-The-Bushies-Ain't and he has nailed W to the wall. The sumbitch raised more than $1M in Minnesota yesterday at a fund-raiser. He has caused the deaths of more fine young people after the END OF MAJOR COMBAT than the casualty count DURING COMBAT! I think I may leave the country. That's what the Bushies want, anyway. The way things are going, they can have it. We're going to hell in a handbasket anyway. One thing ol' P. M. missed. I know why W married Laura. He liked the way she read to him (in her librarian's voice). I don't think W can read hisself. If this be (fair & balanced treason) make the most of it.

[x HNN]

What a Mess

by P. M. Carpenter

The right wingers, muscle flexers, ideologues, pre-emptive strikers, the bunker blasters and the jingoists -- in short, the leaderless Bushies -- have once again screwed things up.

They weren't satisfied with neglecting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the boiling point, or obsessing over a non-threatening goon like Saddam Hussein while ignoring a real-threatening goon like Kim Jong Il, or dropping Afghanistan back into the Taliban's lethal hands. Those were mere previews of inimitable incompetence and deliberate recklessness.

Now, the feature presentation.

I refer, of course, to the creeping Iraq War. Some analysts for some inexplicable reason describe the calamity as a postwar situation, when in fact hostilities have just begun. Our initial military invasion -- what the Pentagon brass, Pentagon groupies, Pentagon has-beens and obsequious journalists straight-facedly called a war -- was little more than a slaying of sandpiles. Like Napoleon's "invasion" of Moscow, we rolled into enemy territory only to find the enemy had checked out, thank you very much.

The locals must have boned up on their Sun Tzu. While we applauded the conquering Bushies and busied ourselves with planting inscrutable "Support Out Troops" yard signs, the ill-equipped, outnumbered foe and neighboring Islamist brothers laid back and sucked us into the real war: a gruesome, unwinnable guerilla war.

The Bushies wanted us to get over Vietnam. Well, we're over it. Indeed, we've gone full circle and again stand at a crossroad. It is the early 1960s and militaristic brains mostly hold the floor, having mopped it up with diplomatic ones.

Then, as now, the militarists held sway over the president. Yet their sway over John Kennedy was perhaps tenuous at best. Unlike George W. Bush, Kennedy possessed an independent and curious mind, one that questioned the use of brute force as a preferred option. True, he escalated American involvement in South Vietnam, but he also rejected the stronger urgings of his Maxwell Taylors and Walt Rostows to introduce U.S. ground troops into the mix. What he might have done ultimately we cannot know; we do know, however, that he died hesitant, if not resistant.

In other words, out of a sense of learned trepidation, if nothing else, Kennedy exerted a presidential independence of mind in refusing to unleash the ravenous dogs of war.

Different circumstances occupy the present Oval Office. Lacking altogether the 35th president's abilities, 43 has assumed the palpable aura of a puppet regime. The Boy King has neither the backbone nor background to stand up to adult voices of impetuousness. There is no informed and authoritative there, there, so the puppeteers -- Bush's own Taylors and Rostows -- are free to run amok. They are free to play with American lives as though these are mere pieces of some inconsequential, big-strategy board game. They are free to rewrite American principles. Allowed to test short-term hypotheses, they are free to condemn America's long-term interests.

The presumed mice are having a field day, since the cat is not just away, but permanently out to lunch.

That presidential-candidate George W. Bush hadn't a clue as to complex domestic issues, let alone complex international ones, became more evident after his tawdry ascension. To watch the man struggle through a rare presidential press conference is to cringe. His answers, of a sort, are so manifestly programmed they only highlight his stature as a yes-man to subordinates. But Bush's political puppeteers have managed to turn ignorance into a virtue.

George isn't a fussbudgety micromanager, they swoon. That would be bad. Instead, he delegates. That is good. They don't mention that George delegates only because he knows not what he himself should do.

At least one grave consequence of 43's forced management style is clear. Bureaucratic strategists are in sole charge of America's future. And what that future looks like can be glimpsed overseas, in rapidly deteriorating Iraq.

The left wingers, parlor pinks, bleeding hearts, tree huggers, the peaceniks and the realists -- in short, the everything-the-Bushies-ain't crowd -- knew better all along. Unfortunately, that doesn't help increasingly endangered Americans abroad and at home.


Mr. Carpenter holds a Ph.D. (University of Illinois-Urbana) in American History and is a syndicated columnist.

© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter