Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
Last week, former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg lashed out at Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s demand that Alamo Trust CEO Kate Rogers resign over an opinion expressed in her 2023 grad-school dissertation.
“This is really dumb,” Nirenberg tweeted in what may qualify as Understatement of the Year.
See, “really dumb” is the standard for Patrick, a former Houston radio jock who somehow parlayed his subpar Rush Limbaugh imitation into a political career.
Since being elected to the Texas Senate in 2006, Patrick — one of the state’s loudest culture warriors — has shown himself to be both untethered from reality and, despite his proclivity for cowboy cosplay, too dumb to pour water out of a boot.
Let’s run down some of the former Danny Goeb’s greatest hits, shall we?
•This spring, as the state dealt with real and pressing issues — among them, its worst measles outbreak in decades — Patrick threatened to pass a law that would change name of the “New York strip” steak to the “Texas strip.” Why? So he could own East Coasters over their woke ways.
•In 2013, Patrick vied to raise campaign cash with an online post claiming Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson was actually channeling the voice of God when he made offensive anti-LGBTQ+ comments to GQ magazine.
•That same year, Patrick assured a Baptist congregation in Conroe it was OK to impose its religious views on the rest of Texas because there’s “no such thing as separation of church and state.”
•And, in 1992, while still in radio, Patrick drew the ire of Asian Americans for joking that journalist Connie Chung’s TV show should be called Slanted Eye to Eye — a comment for which he refused to apologize.
We could go on, but this is a newspaper column, not a book approaching the heft of War and Peace or Lonesome Dove.
Patrick’s torrential case of verbal diarrhea would be a real knee slapper if the state wasn’t drowning in it. Put more politely, the lieutenant governor’s asinine outbursts have consequences.
Just ask Rogers, who resigned from the Alamo Trust after drawing the lieutenant governor’s ire. Her departure comes even though she’s won copious praise for both her fundraising acumen and her ability to get things done despite the meddling of Christian nationalists — Patrick included — intent whitewashing the monument’s history.
Perhaps if Patrick runs off enough Alamo Trust leaders, he can install an animatronic version of himself at the front gate narrating a looped tour: “Welcome, patriots! Please keep all critical thinking to yourself!”
Until rational voters start turning up and bounce this assclown out of office, we can expect more of the same.
And, yes, more of the same will be really fucking dumb.
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