Messin' with Texas

Here are a few snippets of conversation from the past week or so at work. They are of course all political. That’s really the thing that strikes me most about Texas; everyone is so conservative and suspicious of government. That, and all the nice sunrises I get to see. Texas has a beautiful sky in the morning.

• In a conversation about the president, a guy asked “how, after 9-11, can the American people vote for a man with the middle name Hussein?” I thought he was joking for a second. I remember when I first heard this brought up while I was still in New York, pretty much everyone I knew dismissed this fact as completely meaningless. Apparently around here that’s not the case.
• In the same conversation with the same guy, he pointed out to me an astonishing fact that made me realize what a mistake we have made in our choice for president (sarcasm). He pointed out that all the other nations led by black leaders were all poor, malnourished, disease ridden countries. I am not sure which of his two statements was more ignorant.
• He said a lot of other ignorant things, preceeded by the words “…and it’s nothing racial.” The fact that he had to say it’s nothing racial before every statement was commical. If I were to say: “women, and it’s nothing sexists because I am all for gender equality, shouldn’t work on construction projects. That’s a man’s job,” does that make it not sexist? I feel like all it’s doing is acknowledging the fact that he knows he’s a racist before he allows you to implicitly come to that conclusion. Or maybe the two contradictory statements are meant to confuse the listener. ‘I am not a racist, but <insert race> are the only people who deserve <insert anything>.
• This time a different guy from work recommended that I watch Glenn Beck, because he has some really good points (Glenn Beck link 1, link 2). So good in fact, that his wife recorded his show all last week so that they could share Beck’s wisdom with everyone. He encouraged me to watch and offered to bring in the recordings for me. Fortuneately I don’t have a TV or a VCR, so I was able to side step that offer.