ustxtxb_obs_1986_03_07_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

1, III ,111w11,1111 11111111 ” 11411 111111 TEXAS The Texas Observer Publishing Co.. 1986 Vol. 79, No. 5 March 7, 1986 Copyright 1986 by Texas Observer Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission. PUBLISHER Ronnie Dugger EDITOR Geoffrey Rips ASSOCIATE EDITOR Dave Denison CALENDAR EDITOR Chula Sims LAYOUT AND DESIGN: Val Fowler EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Kathleen Fitzgerald WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Vera Titunik EDITORIAL INTERNS: Ron Cesar. Beau Barton. Ellen Williams. EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Frances Barton. Austin: Elroy Bode, Kerrville; Chandler Davidson. Houston; Bob Eckhardt, Washington, D.C.: Sissy Farenthold, Houston; Ruperto Garcia, Austin; John Kenneth Galbraith. Cambridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; George Hendrick, Urbana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, Dallas; Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., San Antonio; Willie Morris. Oxford. Miss.; Kaye Northcott, Austin; James Fred Schmidt, Tehachapi, Cal., Robert Sherrill, Tallahassee. Fla. CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Warren Burnett, Jo Clifton. Craig Clifford, Louis Dubose, John Henry Faulk, Ed Garcia, Bill Helmer. James Harrington, Jack Hopper, Amy Johnson. Michael King, Dana Loy, Rick Piltz, Susan Raleigh, John Schwartz, Michael Ventura, Lawrence Walsh. CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS: Alan Pogue, Russell Lee, Scott Van Osdol, Alicia Daniel. CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: Mark Antonuccio, Eric Avery, Tom Ballenger. Jeff Danziger, Beth Epstein, Dan Hubig, Pat Johnson, Kevin Kreneck, Carlos Lowry, Miles Mathis. Joe McDermott. Ben Sargent. Dan Thibodeau. A journal of free. voices We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we agree with them because this is a journal of free voices. Managing Publisher Cliff Olofson Subscription Manager Stefan Wanstrom Publishing Consultant Frances Barton Development Consultant Hanno T. Beck Editorial and Business Office 600 The Texas Observer paid at Austin, Texas. Subscription rates, including 5 1/8% sales tax: one year $23, two years $42, three years S59. One year rate for full-time students, $15. Back issues $2 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group. and bulk rates on request. Microfilm editions available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 ‘ N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright 1986 by Texas Observer Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission. POSTMASTER: Send form 3579 to: 600 West 28th Street, #105, Austin, Texas 78705. 2 MARCH 7, 1986 EDITORIAL Purple Reign IT IT strike anyone else as strange the sesquicenten nial effusion of obeisance to a royal figurehead from a state and monarchy that the foremothers and fathers of the foreparents of this state overthrew before sending their offspring out to colonize this corner of their manifest .destiny? Here we have the prince with big ears flapping in to check on British investments in Texas and to pick up a few trade secrets, and every officeholder and would-be officeholder sticks to him like glue. Now it’s not difficult to see why Governor Mark White, House Speaker Gib Lewis, Mayors Kathy Whitmire, Starke Taylor, Henry Cisneros, and Frank Cooksey would want to be seen with his demi-majesty. There is something attractive, no doubt, about the permanence of office Charles enjoys. And it’s never been a secret that the country club set of Texas, some harboring Tory blood, has so desperately longed for an official imprimatur of aristocracy, which it thinks it so richly deserves. Witness, in this Texas independence season, no less than the San Antonio Country Club’s own King Antonio and his Cavaliers, who drive in uniform around town in shiny convertibles with police escorts, dispensing aluminum coins to the children of the city in their elementary schools. And that arbiter of country-club etiquette, the Dallas Morning News, provided tips on proper behavior when meeting up with one of the royals. Call Charles “His Royal Highness” on first meeting, it advised, but “Sir” after that. \(Ethiopian King Haile Selassie was called “His Imperial Majesty” to hand unless He proffers His first.It seems princes keep their hands folded behind their backs not so much to look imperial but to prevent just anyone from trying to shake them. This probably also explains the Queen’s penchant for carrying a purse. But Charles proved to be a regular sort of blue-blooded chap. Apparently tired of all the royal etiquette himself, the bonnie prince at one point bolted from Dallas Mayor Taylor’s proper entourage long enough to press the flesh of some Kilgore Rangerettes, who had turned their wide smiles and one of those complex dance routines the prince’s way. \(It probably has something to do with “the banality of regals” that Hannah Arendt wrote about, the way the prince’s mum thing he couldn’t do with Princess Di around. But Charles was mostly engaged in the dull business of hacking for a doddering kingdom visiting Shell Oil in Houston, talking with engineers at UT, sweating His way through subsidized housing with Cisneros. And there was the Winston Churchill award given to H. Ross Perot, the oneman SWAT team, in a city due south of the spot from which Sir Winston decades before had created the Iron Curtain by naming it a few years after mapping it out with Roosevelt and Stalin, as they divided up the world in Yalta. SIR ENDED his waltz across Texas by unsheathing his sword and cutting a royal swath through a sesquicentennial cake weighing some 90,000 pounds, then disappear ing as fast as Zorro, leaving the pastry for the plebes while he soireed with Lady Bird for $2500 a head.