Thumbs up, down
Bravo to one brave valedictorian, but no applause for a Paxton vs. Bush primary.
Before Paxton Smith took the microphone last Saturday as valedictorian of her Lake Highlands High School class, she had been warned along with all the other student speakers at the high school in North Texas that any deviation from their already vetted speeches would lead to the microphone being cut off.
“I thought it was worth the risk,” Smith later explained, and then proceeded to deliver a short, fiery and totally unsanctioned speech condemning the “war on my body” brought on by the Texas Legislature’s passage this session of the socalled fetal heartbeat bill that limits the right to abortion only to the first six weeks.
“I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I’m raped, then my hopes and aspirations and efforts for my future will no longer matter,” she said, to applause from classmates seated on the field before her. “I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is. I hope you can feel how dehumanizing it is to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you.”
Message received, loud and clear, Paxton. If you’re representative of the young women graduating with you this year, then Thumbs and the rest of the adult world can rest a little easier knowing that help is on the way.
Which, to be perfectly honest, we can really use here in Texas. Thumbs has been asking for help for years from fellow Texans to dump our indicted, scandal-plagued attorney general and so far — crickets. Not only have voters seemed to tolerate him — he’s been in office now seven years, nearly six of which he’s spent weaseling out of his still-pending criminal trial on fraud charges — he just refused to leave.
So good news, first: Someone with stature has finally decided to challenge him in next spring’s GOP primary. Bad news: That someone is Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Listen, Thumbs takes a backseat to no one in line for a seat on the Anybody But Ken Paxton Bus, we’ve been aboard so long we’ve had time to write our own country song about Paxton, which we’re calling “Running from the Law When you are the Law.”
But Bush is the guy who single-handedly screwed over Houston and Harris County last month when his office announced that the city and county had scored a grand total of bubkes in the first round of Harvey-related grants the land office was administering for HUD. What a joke.
Harvey? Houston? Sure, they hardly even knew each other.
Texas Republicans did get help of another kind Friday morning, the kind that can really help the weekend start early. The inflammatory chairman of the Texas GOP, former Florida Congressman Allen West, announced he’s quitting after 11 months of stirring up trouble in every direction. Thumbs won’t miss his hair-trigger, Socialist-in-every-cupboard rhetoric, but will say this for him: He was catholic in his enemies. Sure, he clashed with liberals such as Mayor Sylvester Turner in a fight over pandemic rules during the GOP state convention in Houston. But he also squared off against his own party’s top leaders, too, including the governor, the lieutenant governor and House speaker.
Now comes word that he’s “prayerfully considering” a primary race of his own, against Gov. Greg Abbott.
Thumbs is already making the popcorn for that one, but somehow we doubt the tea party fueled maverick will give Abbott, recently bear-hugged by a certain former president, much trouble. West probably would have made more friends if he’d have stuck to the GOP script of trash talking the other team? Abbott was busy last week jawing about President Joe Biden, whom he says owes him an apology for describing his rush to lift pandemic restrictions as “Neanderthal.” Instead of leading to a surge of deaths, as Biden seemed to predict, Abbott claims his decision to lift the mask rules was a bonanza for Texans ready to get on with living.
Thumbs isn’t holding its breath for the presidential mea culpa, though. For one thing, thousands of people did die in the weeks after Texas lifted its mask ordinance. A little over 5,000 as a matter of fact, according to Chronicle reporting.
How many fewer might have died had Texas kept its wits, and let local governments keep masks ordinances in place for just a few a weeks more? Well, we’ll never know.
It’s true though, things could have been a lot worse than they turned out. Surely, part of the reason for that was that so many people — especially in Houston and Texas’ large cities — remained cautious in public while vaccinations picked up here and across the country.
Meanwhile, many of us are still wearing masks indoors, and many businesses still require it. It’s called prudence, and that’s nothing to apologize for. Wanna know who should apologize, though? All the heart-renders and killjoys who’ve painted over, vandalized and otherwise defaced Houston’s iconic Be Someone message on the rail bridge that passes over I-45 north of downtown. Now, after another attack, organizers who’ve steadfastly repainted the message every time it was vandalized, say they may finally be calling it quits.
“10 years of the Be someone Bridge has been amazing,” said the artist in an Instagram post.
Yes it has. Inspirational, too. When 5 o’clock traffic left Thumbs ready to honk our horn at the bozo merging at the last minute, the graffiti reminded us to be someone — someone kind. Someone forgiving. Someone who, after all, doesn’t have a bird finger to flip at other drivers.