|
Life Imitates Art, Again
As usual, life outdoes art in its marvelousness. Anyone who writes about Texas politics, however, faces the problem known to religious ecstatics of trying to explain an experience in terms that don't sound delusional. Looking back on my unsold script, I realize that not even Hollywood would buy the idea, for instance, of a legislator who arranges to have himself shot in order to gain the sympathy vote. That actually happened; truth, however, is not a refuge for an artist trying to hawk his script to the Hollywood skeptics who believe they know real life when they see it.
...
The point of the walkout was to keep Texas Republicans from doing to the country what they have already done to Texas. Tom DeLay, the implacable majority leader of the United States House of Representatives and himself a veteran of the Texas House, wants a Congressional delegation that more accurately reflects the allegiance of the state's voters. Democrats now outnumber Republicans 17 to 15 in the Texas delegation to the House. The districts were drawn by federal judges after state lawmakers failed to pass their own plan in the last legislative session two years ago.
Guided by Karl Rove, the man who helped elect most of those Republicans, Mr. DeLay got behind a plan that would help bring the Republicans up to 19 or 20 seats. Lloyd Doggett, who represents the capital city of Austin, would have seen his district cut to ribbons. Mr. Doggett was a Killer Bee, and Republicans have never forgiven him for it. Under the proposed redistricting plan, one could walk from the statehouse in the middle of town to the Interstate — a distance of seven blocks — and cross four Congressional districts, one of which stretches to Mexico and another that ends in Houston, nearly 200 miles away.
- From an Op-ed in NYTimes 5/23/2003 by Lawrence Wright, reprinted in its entirity here on his personal webpage
Yup, that's right: Gordon's dad wrote a screenplay about a fictional walkout of the Texas Senate Democrats 3 years before a very similar episode actually took place. And no one would buy it.
Okay, so the fictional characters holed up in the Alamo instead of an Oklahoma motor inn. And in the play, there is no department of Homeland Security around to track down the fugitive legislators (like there was in real life with Pete Laney's personal plane).
Wait a minute - the real thing is more unbelievable than the fiction. I find this extremely funny.
By the way, does anyone else gasp at how ludicrous the redistricting proposal was? I had no idea it was this obvious a gerrymander until I read Larry's piece. How could any sane person possibly justify such a maneuver to his fellow countrymen, wife and kids, or even himself?
And the sad thing is, it looks like it's going to get pushed through next session.
Ugh.
|
