Turkey Awards 2025

Bon Appétit!

We here at yon Weekly may make mistakes, but we’re not evil, hateful dipshits like the majority of turkeys on this list and in D.C. and Austin. Like most of you, we’re doing the best we can trapped in a terrible general state of affairs in a terribly run state. Republicans have been in control of Texas since 2003, and what do we have to show for that intrepid “leadership”? Other than culture-war nonsense that nobody but crazed and crazy Christian Nationalists asked for?

Is Texas safer? Some of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have happened in this state, and we lead the nation in gun deaths among children, so that’s a firm “no.” Is Texas smarter? We’re ranked 41st overall, so another “no.” Is Texas’ middle class earning more? We’re 31st for average annual salary, so you do the math. But if you’re transitioning, you’d better choose the proper restroom, and if you’re any other minority doing anything else normal and routine, you’d better play by the new rules, or the political-media hate machine — which encompasses every outlet from the Star-Telegram to The New York Times, CBS, Washington Post, CNN, and ABC — will prop you up to tear you down. The sane-washing, both-sidesing msm’s point is to suck up to the billionaires really running the show and the GOP’s hateful, mostly poorly educated, clearly subconsciously self-loathing base, who just happen to vote consistently. That’s it. That’s all they offer, showing up on Election Day, and everyone’s afraid to piss them off. weLL, giVe Us SoMEoNe oR sOmEThInG diFfeRenT tO vOtT foR. Not voting for Kamala Harris because she wasn’t left enough and sharpshooting Gavin Newsom, our only hope for 2028, not only means you’re effectively MAGA. It makes you worse than them because you ostensibly know better yet are choosing spite and personal grievance over reality and progress.

The chief reason many of us choose to stay — in this country, in this state — is that we may have some semblance of roots here. Plus, running away doesn’t solve anything. Staying and fighting is ennobling, and in our own little way, calling out the jerks like our rag does every week — especially in this issue — may go toward enlightening an unenlightened mind or three.

So, pull up a metal folding chair to McDumpster’s, give a halfhearted thanks, plug your nose, and dig in. The Fort Worth Weekly’s 2025 Turkey Awards are served, hot and stinky. — Anthony Mariani, Editor

Thin-Skinned

Mayor Mattie Parker has had quite the year. She totally capitulated to Mercy Culture Church when Oakhurst and the surrounding neighborhoods were adamantly against the church’s shelter for survivors of human trafficking, who should remain anonymous and hidden, not trotted out like prized turkeys to generate public support. She has led the cheerleading of the TEA’s ill-advised takeover of Fort Worth ISD. She has been instrumental in keeping our city firmly in control of the Fort Worth establishment by moving to make our government less responsive to the public by reducing the number of sessions when citizens can make public comments to only 10, down from 15.

Then after community activist Patrice Jones said Parker was too thin-skinned, the mayor proved it by saying, “I still have your casket,” a borderline racist, undoubtedly insensitive comment for which she still hasn’t apologized. She then met with — of all people — right-wing nut State Rep. Nate Schatzline and the even nuttier County Judge Tim O’Hare, not exactly voices of calm and reason, to insist that her political differences with others who want more public comment aren’t actually political but spiritual. Huh? Then she topped that by requesting ministers and laypeople from Mercy Cult — sorry, “Culture” — come and saturate city council chambers with prayer.

Who would put a church, no matter how well-meaning or, in the case of Mercy Culture, not-so-well-meaning, over an entire neighborhood’s desire? Who would think it would be a good idea in the middle of a heated city council meeting to talk smack to an upstanding member of the Black community? Who would go along with Texas Education Commissar Mike Morath’s Great White Hope leadership that will fix “woke, DEI-influenced” FWISD? In a country inching toward authoritarianism, who would want less public input, not more? And who would escalate a political disagreement into the cosmic realm, when the decent thing would have been to issue a simple and, we’d hope, heartfelt apology?

In theory, having nonpartisan mayors might not be a bad idea. In reality, not so much. We prefer that city leaders be open about their political leanings. Obviously, Mayor Parker isn’t politically neutral. After all, she’s dependent on a MAGA Republican establishment to contribute to her campaigns and stand by her side, especially in the midst of so-called spiritual warfare, and Trump bootlicker Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed her, so there’s that.

Only a few years back, Parker was this fresh-faced, obviously bright chief of staff of Mayor Betsy Price, so you might be excused for not totally getting her, but this past year has erased all doubt about who she really is: a MAGA mayor. So, thin-skinned or not, Mayor Mattie Parker is most definitely a turkey.

Plump Pigskin

When it comes to Turkeys awarded for local sports, we might as well name the trophy after Jerry Jones. Whether the natural-gas baron cosplaying as a football guy is shipping off two first-round picks for Joey Galloway or taking suggestive bathroom selfies with girls a third his age, football-related or not, it seems like every year the Cowboys owner can find a way to put another Turkey on his mantle — easily the only trophies he’s managed to win over the last three decades.

This year’s honor was earned as a result of his handling of the Micah Parsons situation. It’s not so much the decision to move on from the three-time All Pro but in the ugly, protracted process that played out over the year leading up to it. The drawn-out stalemate resulted in a mediocre Cowboys defense in 2024 becoming an all-time bad one in 2025. It’s probably never a good idea to intentionally subtract one of the league’s elite pass rushers from your roster, especially if that one alone can fairly successfully hide many of your defensive deficiencies. Much less so to do it on the eve of Week 1. Moving Parsons to Green Bay was confusing, poorly timed, and reactionary. In other words, quintessentially Cowboys.

One of Jones’ patented folksy expressions is “Don’t let your money get mad.” Solid advice for keeping emotions out of business dealings. However, Parsons’ sudden and unexpected banishment from the warm, nurturing bosom of the Silver and Blue is evidence that Jerruh did in fact do just that. As it dragged on and on, the very public gamesmanship between Jones and Parsons eventually got mean, and the former took it personally.

Again, the decision not to cede $47M a year to a prima donna podcast host daylighting as a perennial NFL Defensive Player of the Year candidate isn’t an indefensible position, but if you’re going to do it, you make the choice early enough to maximize return. In hindsight, the net result of the value of the deal is likely a wash. In return for “The Lion Queen,” Jerry flipped one of our two first-round picks at the deadline for bullrush defensive tackle Quinnen Williams. It’s too late for Jerry’s deadline scrambling to save the season. It’s all the harder to take because the quarterback he’s paying $65M a year is earning every dollar of it so far this year. A better record would warrant legitimate MVP consideration for Dak Prescott. What a waste.

Though certainly not as egregious a move as the one executed by his basketball counterpart with the Mavs, the Parsons trade suggests Jerry was inspired by the same motivation. Emotion got the better of whatever rational judgment may still exist in his Johnny Walker-addled mind.

Legwork

To be honest, some of the stuff we’ve seen on the walls of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has made us want to take it down and lock it up. We haven’t done that because that would be art theft. Well, the Fort Worth Police Department did just that this past winter, and when that happens, it’s called government censorship.

After County Judge Tim O’Hare called for a criminal investigation, the coppers seized five photographs by Sally Mann of her own unclothed young children from the Modern’s Diaries of Home exhibit. Never mind that said photographs have been exhibited elsewhere without incident or that those grown-up children approved the pictures’ use in this manner. The police took more action against an art museum than any American law-enforcement agency since Cincinnati tried to ban Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in the early 1990s. Oh, and FWPD spent $7,000 of your taxpayer dollars traveling to New York City (and probably dining out at Gramercy Tavern) to investigate leads when scholarly articles about Mann were available at the touch of a button.

Fortunately, a grand jury declined to return an indictment against the museum, forcing the police to return the seized artwork. The damage is done, though. How eager are the world’s big-name artists going to be to send their pieces to Fort Worth knowing that their work might well be locked away in some police evidence room just because some right-wing trolls decide to score a few political points? For O’Hare and the cops, a turkey within a turkey for them.

French Fried

The federal government shutdown that lasted a record-breaking 43 days accomplished nothing on either side, unless you count creating more unnecessary chaos and making it even harder to afford health insurance next year an “accomplishment” on a technical level. The shutdown stopped payments for starving families, forced tens of thousands of government employees to work longer hours for no pay, and somehow made Congress even less productive. The only way the last could be worse is if someone opened the Capitol’s domed roof and poured in enough quick-drying cement to engulf everyone sitting in the House and the Senate.

There’s no good angle to the shutdown, including the fact that it outed Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French as an even bigger racist than we all normally thought. During the height of the shutdown, the local Republican Party’s dollar-store Howard Hamlin got on his X account and posted what he probably thought was a hilarious joke about stalled SNAP benefits. The post started with a blatant threat encouraging his followers to arm themselves and ended with a racist crack, “All I can say is avoid city centers, stay strapped, carry spare mags, and have a plan to keep your family safe. When the hoards are chimping out, everyone is at risk.”

You don’t need me to tell you that French didn’t apologize. Far from it. Instead, he went back on X the following day to post this little nugget of numbskullery. “November 1, 2025, is National Chimp Out Day. It’s going to be lit.”

For starters, “chimping” is not a verb, so he’s not only being racist. He’s also proving Texas really needs to overhaul its education system. Then there’s the obvious racist connotation of likening Blacks to primates, which has been happening for centuries, and the application of the hip-hop slang term “lit.” It’s safe to say this guy is a racist POS.

Citizens and political leaders called for French to resign from his chairman position, and he did. But don’t get excited. He stepped down to run for Texas Railroad Commissioner next year.

Fry Nico!

Nine months ago, now-former Dallas Mavericks General Manager Nico Harrison sat in front of a roomful of reporters, smirking and laughing, and instantly became the most hated man in the history of DFW sports. Perhaps never to be unseated from that ignominious throne. In a world where Jerry Jones exists, that’s really saying something.

Harrison’s tone-deaf jocularity came during the impromptu press conference called in February to address the now-infamous trade he pulled off in the dead of night with the Los Angeles Lakers. The offhand way in which he explained himself for sending away phenom point guard Luka Dončić — a beloved superstar just entering the prime of his career and on a trajectory that suggested that when all was said and done, he would likely leave a Top-5-player-to-ever-do-it-type legacy — should have been the first indication that Harrison just didn’t understand the magnitude of what he was doing. That lack of realization in and of itself should be considered professional malpractice for a supposed basketball GM, to say nothing of the merits of the move. Now, our little basketball lives will never be the same.

Compounding the vitriol aimed at Harrison for his initial confusion and dismissiveness regarding fans’ anger and heartbreak was his woefully questionable rationale for the jettisoning of the perennial MVP candidate in the first place. It seemed to center on a perception that Dončić, due a massive supermax contract extension in the coming offseason, somehow wouldn’t be worth the money. In Harrison’s mind, a questionable work ethic, consistent injury concerns attributed to a supposed lack of attention to conditioning, and a reported enthusiasm for the party life coupled with a perceived stubbornness to changing his habits, had convinced Nico that Luka couldn’t be trusted to be on the court for the majority of the deal. Harrison was apparently successful in convincing a decidedly non-basketball-focused ownership group of the same.

The great irony is the return on the trade: mid-30s Anthony Davis, whose nickname is “Street Clothes” because he wears them during games so often due to injury. Davis has played just 14 of a possible 46 games for the Mavs since coming from L.A. The irony has not been lost on anyone — except Harrison.

Since the trade, “Fire Nico!” has become an area mantra. It’s almost as popular as “Remember the Alamo!” — maybe even more so, because crowds at the AAC when the Stars are playing and at high school football games aren’t chanting that for no reason at all the way they are “Fire Nico!”

Just last week, the pitchfork-wielding mob finally got their pound of flesh. With the Mavericks off to their worst start since 2017, Harrison was finally shown the door, descending his secret crowd-avoiding AAC escape route for the last time.

So now what? Ownership listening to fans and offering Nico up for sacrifice might be the first step toward placating some fans who had abandoned the team, but it does nothing to actually fix the mess Harrison’s ego has put the franchise in. It smacks of the same unfulfilling sense of frustration now being directed at Joe Rogan and the rest of the podcast man-o-sphere for their sudden regret over the influence they had over the 2024 election. While it’s nice, we suppose, when someone admits they fucked up, the damage has already been done, and the rest of us still have to live with the consequences.

Say Grace Before Dinner

We figured that the Republican Party’s push to outlaw abortion would bring a few men’s skeletons out of the closet. Step forward, Giovanni Capriglione. The Keller state rep’s website touts his 100% pro-life voting record and his vote to defund Planned Parenthood, but it seems as though he’s more flexible about it in his private life.

This past summer saw a conservative website air an interview with former exotic dancer Alex Grace in which she alleged a 17-year affair with Capriglione that included him paying for numerous abortions. In response, the former private equity manager denied the bit about abortions but admitted to having cheated on his wife and said she had forgiven him. Gee, that sounds really nice for him. He also said he wouldn’t run for reelection but would stay in office for the remaining 18 months of his term, despite calls from fellow House Republicans to resign.

Whether he paid for abortions or not before he wrote the legislation to outlaw them in Texas, this guy sure seems to think that sexual morality applies to everybody except himself. Instead of a turkey, we’re giving him a gift certificate to the Chuck E. Cheese location where he allegedly met Grace to hand her envelopes of cash. Maybe he can slip some money to the staff, and they can put some turkey on his pizza.

Bashing the Bash

Speaking of Capriglione, guess who’s running for his seat in the Texas Legislature? That would be Keller Mayor Armin Mazani. If you’ve heard that name before, he’s the guy who bashed Pride Kel-So as exposing children to so-called highly sexualized content. Wow, that’s a nice set of elected officials that Keller has, right? Gotta hand it to them. They’re making Southlake look as liberal as Portland, Oregon, by comparison.

To be fair, Mazani wasn’t the only Republican spreading lies about the LGBTQ+ event that took place last month on private land owned by a church between the cities of Keller and Southlake. Tarrant County Republican Party chairman Bo French also accused gays of grooming children (a slander as old as saying that Jews are pedophiles) and called trans people mentally deranged. Yes, these guys are probably just out for votes, but what a scummy way to get them, especially when Texas gun nuts are posting on social media about shooting up these events.

The inaugural Pride Kel-so did go off well. We at the Weekly give thanks for that and no thanks to these defective males.

One-Star Meal

We’ll be the first to admit that they have some good restaurants over in Dallas, but are their restaurants six times better than ours? The folks at the famous Michelin Guide to eateries all over the world seem to think so. The French-based publication finally announced (amid much fanfare) they were rating North Texas establishments, but when the 2025 edition of the guide came out, 25 restaurants in Dallas County rated a mention while a measly four on our side of the county line made the cut.

Who knows? Maybe the Michelin raters canvassed Fort Worth thoroughly and decided that the likes of Walloon’s and Grace and Michael’s and all the others just weren’t up to their standard. It would be fine (although a blow to our civic pride) if that’s what happened, but we don’t know that because the Michelin folks are hush-hush about where they go for dinner. Four listed restaurants makes it look like they gave our town only a cursory go-over to concentrate on the bigger city to our east.

Possibly all our local dining institutions need to raise their game, but we’re betting that the raters made the same mistake as so many out-of-towners and mistook our city for a glorified suburb of Dallas. If that’s how it was, then they richly deserve their turkey. We’re giving them a deconstructed bird cooked sous vide and served with sage foam and apple gel on the side while a server pops a balloon over their heads that releases cranberry scent. We might not get anything like that at our local restaurants, but we know their worth.

DEI Hard

Granted, $300 million is a lot to say no to. That’s what Fort Worth City Council was facing this past summer when the urban core-hating Trump White House told cities to end their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or face the loss of federal funding. At the city council meeting in August, a veritable parade of speakers asked the council to stand up and stand alongside cities like Seattle and Portland that said, eh, no thanks, tRump. Fort Worth had the chance to not only obey the will of the voters but also show the nation that this city would welcome marginalized communities just like those Pacific Northwest villes (and we have a lot more sunshine).

Instead, council backed down. A 7-4 vote ended the city’s commitment to improving the lives of people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. The councilmembers can truthfully claim that they’re being bullied by Jeffrey Epstein’s good buddy in Washington, but that doesn’t do much to help anyone or change the fact that they caved. Would we have voted for those people in May if we’d known they would show so little backbone in August? Since that’s the case, we’re not giving them the backbone of the turkey. Rather, we’re giving them all white meat, because their actions will surely make Fort Worth a whiter and more boring place.

Hot Pulpit

Just mentioning Mercy Culture Church to some fellow residents can produce the kind of massive, throbbing headache that you’d decapitate yourself with a plastic butterknife just to end. Since the Johnson Amendment, which prevents nonprofits from participating in political endorsements, means nothing anymore, this “church” hasn’t been dipping its toes into the pool of political persuasion. This year, it did a full-on, Ron Burgundy-style cannonball.

The controversial establishment that’s more associated with the word “cult” than Ian Astbury already had a sketchy reputation of inserting itself into local and national politics. A 2022 joint investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribute found three instances in a span of three months in which Senior Pastor Landon Schott openly endorsed candidates in sermons. Last year, a whistleblower who escaped the Northside compound said Mercy Culture not only openly endorsed additional candidates, including Sheriff Bill Waybourn. She also said she endured two years of harassment and racist remarks by staffers and congregants.

This past year, the holy house of holy shit run by the married team of Landon and Heather Schott stepped out of the shadows with its political persuasion powers and openly embraced its obvious biases. Landon jumped on social media to celebrate the fact that his Mercy Culture preparatory school had the lowest rate of vaccinated students in the state, saying, “We value our HEALTH & FREEDOM!”

The church also not only brought back elder Michael Brown, who was revealed to have engaged in “sexually abusive misconduct” in the 2000s, according to at least two third-party investigations. Mercy Culture celebrated his return during a service with confetti, presumably made from the shredded remains of the sexual misconduct reports.

Most recently, the church created its own online school to train religious candidates on how to run effective campaigns for public office. Mercy Culture even recruited Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline to teach at and release a video ad for Campaign University in which he said the “university” wanted to recruit candidates who would bring “the values that Scripture teaches us into every realm of the Earth.”

We can probably assume Schatzline and the Schotts aren’t referring to Philippians 2: 3-4: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves.”

This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board 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.