The Stupidest Session Yet?

Get 'em, Kelso! You go, boy! For those who can't wait until Texas Monthly unveils the Bum Steer Awards of 2005 in its January 2006 issue, John Kelso skewers the House of Clowns. Of the two houses in the Texas capitol building, the Texas Senate is the more cerebral. However, even that staid body of 31 senators has had its moments. Earlier this session, the freshman senator from Amarillo, Kel Seliger (a former mayor), was making his maiden speech on the Senate floor. Traditionally, the other senators haze the newcomer with questions and points of order. After the umpteenth request that he yield, Senator Seliger quipped, "I've yielded more than a high school cheerleader at a drive-in movie." Perhaps that inspired State Clown Representative Al Edwards (D-Houston) to offer the dumbest bill of the session: the Raunchy Cheerleading Act of 2005. The House of Clowns passed the bill — waving pom-poms supplied by Edwards and his co-sponsors — and sent it to the State Senate. We can only pray that this nonsense is DOA. However, Senator Seliger may carry the water on this one since he already is on record about raunchy cheerleaders. Repeat R&R Alert: "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" will provide a report from Texas with an Austin high school cheerleading squad on the Comedy Central cable channel on Monday, 5/9/05, at 10:00 PM (CDT). If this is (fair & balanced) unreality, so be it.


[x Austin Fishwrap]
Dumbest Legislature yet? At least it's providing plenty of funny material
by John Kelso

I'm thinking this might be the stupidest Legislature the state of Texas has ever enjoyed.

I really can't recall a session in which more inanities were discussed and less important business has been accomplished. We're a couple elephants short of a circus, but we've got more than our quota of clowns.

Take Thursday, when the House tackled the critical issues of cheeseburgers and topless dancers on the same day. Now there's an intellectual doubleheader.

For about half an hour, the House debated whether or not alcohol should be served in what are euphemistically called gentlemen's clubs and passed a bill that would make it illegal for a fat boy to sue a McDonald's for serving him a Big Mac.

Has it suddenly become a prerequisite to be an idiot to get elected to the House? Or are these people simply trying to create more silly material for me and Jon Stewart? Not that we're not appreciative.

The argument I liked was the one presented by Houston Rep. Joe Nixon, a Republican who wants to close the topless bars by cutting off their booze sales. Nixon, whose amendment was defeated, complains that he has to drive past six topless bars to get to his church in Houston. So what? The key words here are "drive past." See, Rep. Nixon doesn't have to stop at any of these topless bars, so what's his beef?

Besides, in my neighborhood, I have to drive past three churches to get to the closest bottomless club. And one of the churches I have to pass is Capitol City Baptist Church, the one I refer to as Our Lady of Assault and Battery. That's the church where one of the pastors and his twin brother got busted for giving a boy a whuppin'.

But I don't have to stop there either, so I don't complain about it.

Nixon's other objection is that Houston has so many topless clubs that it is becoming known as the "topless capital of America." Sounds like a bumper sticker to me. And again, so what? It used to be worse. Houston used to be known for Enron. Aren't topless clubs a step up from wiping out your employees' life savings?

It's not that I like topless clubs. I'm with Nixon on that one. What good are they? You can never get those women to go home with you unless you're a biker. But doesn't the Legislature have more important business to attend to than trying to save us from ourselves?

The whole thing stresses me out to the point where I want to go out and get a patty melt with a side order of rings and a Big Gulp. But I guess I won't bother because the way things are going, my attorney won't be able to get my money back by suing to recover my investment on larger slacks.

Then there was the House approving a bill that would have put an end to raunchy cheerleading. When I heard that Rep. Al Edwards, a Houston Democrat, had come up with this bill, I thought nobody in his right mind would be silly enough to waste time discussing it.

Wrong.

What's next ? A two-hour debate on a bill that would make it illegal for a fat topless dancer to sue Burger King for a Whopper because she can't touch her toes? Is it any wonder Texas has become a national punch line?

John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 512-445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com.

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