Cruz defends gay sex, but not marriage
Imagine. A Texas Republican made news this week for saying that the government should stay out of our bedrooms. Shouldn’t that position be a given in a party that portrays government as “the problem” rather than the solution? Isn’t it just inferred in all those “don’t tread on me” T-shirts that personal liberty extends to the bed sheets? And yet, we must stop and take note when Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz — and actually, not even him but his spokesman — tells the Dallas Morning News that “adults should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity.” Even gay people! What a guy, that Cruz. He reportedly even supports repealing Texas’ now-dormant statute that once banned gay sex until the Supreme Court held the law unconstitutional. Of course, that decision and others based on the idea of privacy could be at risk now that another privacybased decision, Roe v. Wade, got the ax. Lest anybody think arch-conservative, Donald Trumpboosting, Elmo-bashing Cruz is reinventing himself as a gay-rights crusader, the senator reminds us that he opposes the high court decision that legalized gay marriage. Which is kind of an odd sort of morality, isn’t it? Standing up for equal opportunity promiscuity but shunning the scurrilousness of a loving, long-term, legal commitment. Crazy times.
“Blue Bell — the best ice cream in the country. …” That’s the folksy, sweetly sung slogan that many Texans grew up on. Nostalgia was always Blue Bell’s choicest ingredient but these days it might be the only one we can still pronounce. The little creamery in Brenham is among nine ice cream brands that “use the lowest quality ingredients,” including thickening agents such as cellulose gum, food starch and artificial colors, according to food magazine Eat This, Not That! The magazine also dished on a Mashed survey showing a majority of people found Blue Bell to be “the worst store-bought ice cream,” leading writer Steven John to lament: “How about just regular milk, cream, and sugar?” While the gatekeepers of Texas pride dismissed the article as a New York City writer’s plot, others reveled in faux bewilderment: “I guess next you will tell me that the cows don’t think Brenham is heaven,” one Chronicle reader commented. Other readers were unfazed, noting they hadn’t touched the stuff since Blue Bell’s 2015 listeria outbreak, which was tied to three deaths, 10 hospitalizations and resulted in the company paying the largest-ever criminal penalty following a conviction in a food safety case: $17.25 million. The disgrace of a Texas institution is never easy to swallow but in today’s post-truth reality, there’s hope for Blue Bell’s savvy marketing team who need only argue that the national ice cream of Texas isn’t made with fake ingredients — merely alternative ingredients.
When Beyoncé says dance, we say “how groovy?” The Houstonbred superstar released her first solo studio album in six years. The images teasing the release gave a taste of the lush, bouncy world she had in store for us on “Renaissance.” The first portrait showed the nearly naked star in a metallic, sexy bit of jewelry-asarmor astride a luminous horse. Many saw Lady Godiva or Bianca Jagger’s brief ride at her Studio 54 birthday celebration in 1977. Glam. Disco. Powerful. We also saw a bit of Houston. In another image, she adds a cowboy hat, some rhinestone fringe and feathers to the getup. The album is a flex, a groove, a vibe and after a couple of hard years here, it’s just what the doctor ordered. The early single, “Break My Soul,” is perhaps the boppiest labor struggle song ever and captured the energy of so many workers rethinking the value of their time and energy during a life-altering pandemic. The other tracks? We’ve commenced some “nobody-watching” dancing and are ready to ride these pot-holed Houston streets acting like every bump is in sync with the beats. The dance anthems are “a love letter to the queer community,” according to the Chronicle’s Joey Guerra. “Creating this album allowed me a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world,” Queen Bey said in an Instagram post. And what does the new album ask of us? “I hope it inspires you to wiggle,” the artist says. We can’t all saddle-up, scantily clad on our celestial ponies, but wiggle, we can do.
Russia says it’s dropping out of the International Space Station after 2024. Once a symbol of international cooperation after the end of the Cold War, it’s destined to plummet back to Earth and into the ocean. That’s a shame and a waste — but a Houstonbased company has a plan to keep it going while a new space station is built. The plan involves Hollywood and, of course, billionaire space tourists. In an opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle, Michael López-Alegría — four-time NASA astronaut, record holder for space walks and now the director of business development for Axiom Space — wrote, “Axiom will build an inflatable entertainment arena and content studio to attach to the space station.” Tom Cruise and movie producers have inked a deal to film in this inflatable studio. Cruise has been meeting with astronauts to get advice and one warned him that the space station smells like a locker room. Oh well, we’re sure it’s nothing a little leftover cosmonaut vodka can’t disinfect in a jiffy.
There’s nothing more cliché than Texas' love affair with football. Whether it’s the Super Bowl dreams of the Cowboys and Texans (don’t laugh!), the (increasingly lopsided) intrastate rivalry between Aggies and Longhorns, or the Friday Night Lights aspirations of our high-schoolers, we eat it up like Beaver Nuggets. But this week’s announcement that the upstart XFL would be adding three more football franchises to the Lone Star State — in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio — left us a bit cool. Sure, the league is owned by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, which gives it a little more juice than most startups. But unless Johnson plans on suiting up to relive his college football glory days, we suspect that tripling down on Texas as a launching pad for this BList league might be more gridiron than even our pigskin-addled brains can handle.
With a tear in our bourbon, we bid farewell to native Kentuckian and adopted Texan Michael Lindenberger, our deputy opinion editor who helped steer the Chronicle’s opinion department to new heights and its first Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing. Whether he‘s penning an essay about Hunter S. Thompson or an editorial about Justice Clarence Thomas, Lindenberger has a passion for truthtelling that’s sorely needed and much admired in these hard times. We wish him the best in his new role as editorial page editor at the Star in Kansas City, a place that seems to need good journalism every bit as much as Texas does.
Blue Bell creamed by magazine; Beyoncé drops an album.