Quote of the day: "the war now raging in Texas is a Mexican civil war and a war for the re-establishment of slavery where it was abolished". - John Quincy Adams, two months after the battle of the Alamo.
Research topic: Happy Shahan and Coahuila y Tejas
"Remember the Alamo"! There he was again, standing in front of another Historical Monument, like a proud father, with the carnivorous guitar-god at his side, "grinning like a coon eating sh*t off a hairbrush" - a quote a friend, years ago, attributed to Davy Crockett. AND, as per usual, he didn't do his homework. If you remember his last conquest was the Lincoln Memorial where he was preternaturally proselytizing African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Women: Civil Rights and the American Civil Rights Movement are infinitely malleable and absolutely up for interpretation.
Glenn, John Wayne and Chill Wills were not really at the siege of the Alamo all those years ago - they were in a facsimile out on a ranch in Bracketville. Who really was at the Alamo and why were they there? Certainly not to try and get their SAG cards.
The History of the Alamo is a very confused mess: Were Davy Crockett and William Travis actively seeking martyrdom in the cause of Texas Independence, in the ruins of Mission Valero, or were they there in opposition to the Mexican President Santa Anna and his dictatorial centrist government, which by the way was anti-slavery?
What was Jim Bowie, a Mexican citizen, fighting for - his wife's family's country (remember Santa Anna was a dictator), was he pissed because they made him convert to Catholicism, or did he really just want to make some knives in peace?
Was the Lone Star flag flying over the walls of the Alamo, as it was at Glenn's back that beautiful sunny afternoon, or was a Mexican flag flying with 1824 (the date of the previous Mexican Constitution) written on it?
Did Davy Crockett die fighting or was he caught trying to get away and then executed? (It would behoove anyone really interested in this matter to read-up on ole Davy - he was quite a colorful character).
Is the Alamo just simply a very famous, cinematically referenced, certainly revered, old Spanish building in Downtown San Antonio or does it also possibly represent a Spanish Catholic Gulag System that exploited and destroyed many Native Americans of the American southwest and their culture?
Boy, this sure get complicated and sticky doesn't it?
Doesn't really lend itself to trite, sophomoric rallies does it?
However, guess what, if there is one man in America that will attempt to pull it off - it's Mr. Glenn Beck.
This really pisses me off because I'm a Texan. My first real girlfriend's mother was related to Davy Crocket. I love the Alamo and all the Mission buildings in San Antonio - I visit some of them, at least, every other month. My paternal grandmothers family arrived in Houston when it was nothing more than the remnants of the burned-out old town of Harrisburg and a Steamboat landing on Buffalo Bayou. I was born in Austin - something I can't wait to tell anyone who will listen at Barton Springs. My Paternal Grandfathers Grandfather settled in Coryell County when the Commanches were still something to be concerned about. His uncle was a Texas Ranger. My granddad had coffee with Frank Hamer a week after he got Bonnie and Clyde. He also worked on the King Ranch during the time that Lyndon Johnson was a Congressional assistant to Dick Kleberg (heir to the King Ranch), my grandfather said that "LBJ sure was skinny". He even saw Glenn McCarthy "belt a guy in the lobby of the Shamrock Hotel" - Mr. McCarthy was supposedly the inspiration for the Jett Rink character, played by James Dean, in the movie "Giant". One of my oldest friends grandfather was an associate of Mr. McCarthy and he and I built a house for a fellow, across the road from John Wayne's 'Alamo' - which gets me where I was headed in the first place:
I live in Johnson City, Texas, about a quarter mile from Lyndon Johnson's childhood home. I walk just about everyday around his grandparent's old homestead and think about a lot of stuff. One of the things I think a lot about is politics - Progressive Politics to be exact. President Lyndon Baines Johnson was a flawed Progressive fellow as am I, and I sure didn't think much of him when I used to think a lot about Vietnam. But, some of the things I've remembered about him lately, with the help of Mr. Beck's "Restore Honor Rally", are his achievements in the Civil Rights Area: The Civil Rights Act and The Voting Rights Act of 1964-65. My goodness, I almost forgot, he also gave us Medicare and Medicaid, didn't he?
You know how sometimes, when you start thinking about something, it makes you think about something else: LBJ's three parks around here, that I enjoy tremendously, are thanks to another "dastardly" progressive - Teddy Roosevelt! It's a shame that we Progressive's don't still call ourselves Bull Moosers.
In summation, sorry for all the digressing, I would like to end in the spirit of Lyndon Johnson: Mr. Beck, I'm a Progressive, not a goddamn Socialist, you little.....leave our Monuments alone, Hoss.
