Adios, Texas
August 20th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Well, I’m off.
In an effort to keep this good-bye from falling into sentimentality or preachiness, I’ll just leave with a recommendation. “Fifty Years of The Texas Observer” pretty much tells the tale of why everyone who works for this magazine does what they do. The anthology was compiled by Char Miller and published in 2004. I came across it by accident while packing up after a different part-time job cut my position. But from the book’s earliest pages, I found a testament to this magazine’s commitment across decades to simple, yet difficult, principles: freedom, equality, and justice. The titles of the very first editorials — “To Enlighten, and Not to Suppress” (Ronnie Dugger) and “Keep Facts Straight, Stand By Convictions” (Paul Holcomb) — tells a reader everything she needed to know about this rag-tag operation. And they do it without a single pun. The current crop of contributors is decidedly puzzled by that.
As frustrating as it can be covering politics, the book is an unexpected record of progress. The problems of fifty years ago seem horrific by today’s standards. Little quirks, like the public obsession with “bra-burning feminists,” covered so well by Kaye Northcott and Molly Ivins, seem pitiable now. And even our 2003 account of House Democrats’ escape to Ardmore, Okla., seems like a story about crises averted. (”If we can stop [the Republicans] now, then my six-year-old will have an opportunity to have a Democratic Congress in her lifetime,” said Rep. Jim Dunnam, who was shooting for optimism at the time.)
And, of course, here is the place for the caveat that these problems are never resolved, just alleviated. The struggle continues. So do the happy hours, hopefully.
I’m off to San Francisco, just because it’s time for this Texas boy to try something new. Please send margaritas.
Thanks for reading. I can’t wait to see how the next blogger only makes this space better.
August 20th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Thanks for clear thinking, good writing and reminding all of us that it’s OK to be idealistic every now and then.