TEXAS TOAST

Andrew Sullivan recently snipped about George W. Bush, "All these years later, the end-result is a Texan president who hasn't seen a civil liberty [he couldn't shred]..."

Finally, a REAL Texan (I know someone who was a Texas transplant who also was enamored of Bush "because he was from Texas"; wearing impostor perfume always seems to arouse the less discerning nostrils), one of Andrew's readers, took offense:

"If your use of the word Texan here is relevant in this context then it must be perjorative. I enjoy your column but can't help but be offended by your occasional generalizations when it comes to my state.

Please realize that all Texans do not hate civil liberties and some are even willing to fight to make sure that Texans and non-Texans alike may enjoy them. Just ask Mr. John Lawrence.

Furthermore, remember that New Haven-born Dubya was raised by a Connecticut family that spent summers vacationing in Maine. He was "educated" at the Phillips Academy (Andover, MA), followed by Yale University (New Haven, CT), followed by Harvard (Cambridge, MA). The man may have lived in Midland but the mold of the man is pure New England. Do not be fooled like the rest by the boots, bird hunts, Crawford ranch, and embellished southern accent. That's all about the politics. If you want to know about Texas and Texans then spend some time learning a bit about Ann Richards. Andrew, she was a Texan."

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Notice how George W. Bush's younger siblings - who were BORN in Texas - talk nothing like him? Walk nothing like him? The height of topsy-turvydom in this arena was reached in 2004 at the RNC Convention when Bush, in his acceptance speech, said, "And some people may be put off by the swagger with which I seem to conduct myself - a swagger which, in Texas, is called..... walking." The crowd rorared at Bush's suggestion that the entire state of Texas is one collective asshole.

Whatever a "real man" is (don't you hate when an asshole says to you, "be a man?" It's always the assholes that say that; they were assholes growing up when their mothers excused their behavior by saying "boys will be boys"; when someone refuses to wallow in their gutter, the "boys" insult the decliner's manhood, actually inviting him to... be an asshole; the asshole, once he reaches old age, thinks he is mature simply because he has lived that long - past his time of course - but he remembers John Huston's line in Chinatown about how politicians, ugly buildings, whores and monsters.... all become "respectable" if they are old enough), Bush doesn't qualify, for, among many other reasons, the fact that he genuinely believs that he needs the cowboy hat, the fake ranch, the non-existent perch catching, the flightsuit codpiece, and so on, to convince us of his manhood. To paraphrase what someone told Elaine on Seinfeld about "grace," manhood is manhood. You either have it or you don't.