As I walked into a Fort Worth post office the other day, I passed a young redneck wearing a patently ignorant T-shirt. Not just ordinarily cretinous, typically stupid, or incredibly ignorant. But extraordinarily ignorant — if not full-blown delusional.
The wearer was the usual type. Hair high and tight underneath a straw cowboy hat, a forearm tattoo or three, with at least one rendering of our favorite phallic canon, daring a nonexistent mob to “Come and Take It.” He was flaunting his pseudo-badassery for all who were susceptible (or as ill-informed as he).
I rolled my eyes as we passed, but I didn’t look back. It was pointless for me to respond, even nonverbally. But it was too much, really. Too much of too much on a tortuous loop.
The teen ranger’s shirt read, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: YOU MEAN TEXAS AND ITS 49 BITCHES”
Wow, I thought. Sexist, asinine, and perversely grandiose.
I mean, I’m a native Texan and all, and proud to be so. Except when young a-holes brandish apparel that flagrantly illustrates Lone Star idiocy. He might as well have been wearing an “I’m With Stupid” tee except, instead of the arrow pointing left or right, it pointed straight up, at the dip’s dip-stained chin.
To be fair, though, the teen ranger was probably educated in Texas, where — in the teen ranger’s vernacular — literacy rates are inferior to the citizens of 47 other bitches in America. But he did get the current number of states right, and that’s reassuring, because the numeracy levels of the wayward denizens in 45 other bitches are superior to those of Texas.
Forty-five? Forty-seven? Why do those numbers ring a bell? Hmmm.
For the uninformed, numeracy is the capacity to understand, reason with, and apply basic numerical concepts. It’s essentially the numerical counterpart of literacy. As in, if you’re ranked 46th out of 50, you’re darn near illiterate in terms of math, which is why you may still consider the state of your birth swell. And why your clueless opinion of said birthplace is so groundlessly swollen.
A colloquial corollary to someone being one’s bitch is making someone one’s bitch. Are Texas conservatives watching too many prison dramas? Or is it an unconscious itch they’ve found a way to scratch?
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to explain things to Jethro Q. Pudwhack because he is fiercely unworldly, proudly ill-informed, and comfortably illiterate in terms of culture, politics, and ethics. Not to mention insensate in terms of his own sexism, chauvinism, and — yes, again — perverse braggadocio.
Now, I, myself, grew up a redneck. We had a small pasture, a garden, and a few dogs and spent a little time around cattle. But even I know that if you’re trotting near the rear of 50 head of cattle, you’re getting the last lick of feed, grain, or hay, and you’re settling for backwash at the trough.
The real head-scratcher for me is, Why are teen ranger and his ilk OK with backwash? Where were his ma and pa when conservative knuckle-draggers rode into their town, and why didn’t they run them off before they intellectually handicapped our little Jethro Q. Pudwhacks?
Stupid may be as stupid does, but Joannie and Jethro Q. Pudwhacks elected the current batch of scamps, who, in turn, made stupid the state bird. But what’s the point in Bocephus going around giving every state that’s not full of doofuses the bird?
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Well, maybe not thinking but vaguely wondering. You’re wondering if I’m really from Texas, because, in the dim space between your ears, real Texans don’t run their heads about education or opine polysyllabic about the lack or sad state thereof. But you and yers are simps and simply mistaken.
Not everyone here drinks piss from a boot and breathes through their mouth. And a bunch of us are unhappy about settling for backwash at a shrinking trough and teen rangers who don’t have a lick of sense.
You may not have been paying attention or paying any mind to the fact that our state is no longer great, and you may not be able to get your hat around the reality of our current morass: Our Legislature is full of dumbasses, and the only thing really big in Texas these days is our clear and present acceleration backwards. Or, in the words of teen rangers, moving backwards bigly.
Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the author of seven nonfiction titles, including Tell-Tale Texas: Investigations in Infamous History.
This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
