Kinky: buck up in Blue in time for 2010.

By Solman



Kinky Friedman is whispering his campaign again. But this time, he’s donning the blue Stetson of the Texas democrats. Maybe.
Kinky is discussing a potential bid in 2010, but an early poll places him with only 9 percent of democrats and dem-leaning independents giving him the primary vote if they were held last August (Selby). I’m a little disappointed, but not too surprised. From news clips and headlines, I am hearing echoes of 2006 coming from Kinky which tell me he might be falling into the same pitfalls he did as an independent.
I was an ardent supporter of Kinky in the last election, right up until I stood at the polls and voted for (democrat) Chris Bell. I prized his independence, which I viewed as both an asset and a challenge for without political ties throughout the government he could function out of conscience and not be forced to appease interest groups, although he therefore had perhaps less clout because of the lack of ties. But what disappointed me in the end was the pattern of joke telling he lapsed into, it seemed that in the final campaign days when he should have been addressing the issues with honesty and seriousness he was still spouting off his one-liners about how politics was really about sucking blood. I feel that helped cost him the election, for he was making a sort of a mockery of the system but it was not the effective satire he had hoped for. And now, he sounds like he is doing it again.
An article posted on Bloomberg news this week featured an interview with Kinky, and I am very disappointed to say he sounds like a broken record. I hear ‘save a horse, ride a cowboy,” “fight wussification,” and a series of old-hat jokes about politicians. This would be fine, I agree politics have a certain degree of blood-sucking, but it’s almost all he’s saying. he doesn’t discuss policy to any great degree, he doesn’t make any serious accusations about current officeholders that wouldn’t be at home on Comedy Central, and he seems unable to come up with any new jokes for that matter. He is certainly playing the role of a non-politician, but in doing so he is missing the point; he has his head so far up this self-righteous independent streak he’s missing the facts and points he needs to be a serious candidate, not simply a walking editorial cartoon. I still want Kinky to run in 2010, I want him to win because I think he could play his cards well enough to make some changes at the pink dome downtown. But he has to step up to the task, and jokes and half-hearted political jabs are not going to get him anywhere. But that might just be who Kinky is, and I might be inflating him to be something he really is not; he might be the sum of his jokes.
We’ll find out sometime in 2009 I suppose, apparently donned in blue.



http://www.statesman.com/search/content/shared/news/stories/2007/09/SELBY_COLUMN_0921_COX.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aVioiTGnLMaM&refer=muse