Oct. 15, 1997

You know how sometimes you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, feeling all grouchy for no real reason? Well, I do something like that, except I wake up on the Politically Incorrect side of the bed.

It's shocking, I know. When it all wears off, I hang my head righteously (in a non-religious manner, of course). But for a few hours every now and then, I just feel this overwhelming need to sneer at consensus.

Those of you with school-aged children probably shouldn't read this part to them as part of your state-required home-reading program which will prepare them to learn by approved government methods; try some Molly Ivins instead.

One such episode hit me last May 5. I woke up and — I wince as I recall it — just really didn't want to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I recall snarling to someone that it simply isn't right to celebrate a military victory by one foreign army over another foreign army in a battle which didn't even take place on American soil.

My reasoning at the time was that we don't celebrate any other foreign military victories — I mean, why not Bannockburn (June 24, 1314), Tsushima (May 27, 1905), Trafalgar (Oct 21, 1805), Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415), Lepanto (Oct. 7, 1571) or Crecy (Aug. 26, 1346)? Or, since most great military victories throughout history seem to have come at the expense of the French, let's celebrate one that lasted a while: Dien Bien Phu (March 13-May 7, 1954). Shoot, you've got a month and a half to celebrate with that one!

I know, I know: that's a rather cold-hearted attitude.

I got another Politically Incorrect wake-up call the other morning, and launched onto a tear about eco-freakism. Looking back, I feel really bad over this one, because more than anything, I probably made some poor children question official propaganda.

It was really bad: I made a vocal assertion that I could care less whether or not the stinking rainforests got torn down, could care less about the stupid varmints that lived there, and thought it was kind of stupid to be teaching kids about other countries' ecologies when they don't know the first thing about their own country's ecology.

I thought my Political Commissar was going to faint on the spot.

Fortunately, that episode didn't last long, and I dutifully colored my "Save the Rain Forest" posters the rest of the afternoon like everyone else.

Another one of my episodes nearly got me kicked off the Texas Business and Education Coalition "Friends of Education" list, so Politically Incorrect was it. It was a brief one, actually, but it sure got some folks upset.

"Public Education is in crisis," I blurted out. "It's been in crisis since at least the 1970s. If we've been 'fixing' it for nearly 30 years, why isn't it 'fixed' yet? Could it be that the bureaucrats we're trusting to do the 'fixing' have no clue about what they're doing, or are purposely trying to do something ELSE?"

I made my apologies, and spent the afternoon on my knees, reciting the "Our Bush, Who Art in Austin" prayer in front of my Hillary Clinton statue in atonement.

After all these episodes and after seeing so many people upset — people who have worked so hard to overthrow the American system of democracy and capitalism — I knew I had to do something. These bouts of Political Incorrectness were growing increasingly alarming, and the National Organization of Women even threatened to call me a "male" in public.

Fortunately, the Texas Legislature established the Healthy Kids Corporation during its last session and, combined with the outstanding propaganda available from the Texas Freedom Network and others, my political re-indoctrination is now complete, and I can once again celebrate ethnic diversity and denigrate Western civilization.