Judge Not, Lest You Aren't Elected

I'm going to issue a caution upfront. This piece will contain a couple of Bible versus, so consider this your religious trigger warning. And, I'm going to name names.

Now, there has been a lot of criticism about the standard offering of thoughts and prayers in the aftermath of horrendous events, events that unfortunately might have been prevented or at least mitigated with a little action as well.

My Outlaw colleagues Jim Moore and Chris Newlin have done a bang up job this week of outlining all that could have been done to help the folks in the Hill Country escape the worst of this week's floods. Opportunities missed, money that could have been spent, concern ahead of time, not when it's too late.

Which brings me to the first verse. It's from the Book of James...

"What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?  If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food,  and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?  Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."

Politics apparently got in the way of either accepting money offered by the Biden Administration for warning systems along the Guadalupe River, or the Texas Legislature this year proposing more coordination of warnings and first response statewide. In short, "we can't take that damned Biden money and we won't spend ours."

But now that over 300 lives have been lost, we offer thoughts and prayers. Not the "works" part, only the praying. Oh, maybe a few works will pop up in the special session this summer, but it is too little, too late. But it will be wrapped up in pious posturing from our state leaders, especially the man who has appointed himself our Protestant Pope, apparently, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

I've known Dan a long time and have seen the changes in him over the years. As the wonderfully acerbic wit Oscar Levant once said of a big band singer he worked with, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

I was hired away a couple of times in the 1980s, first from KHOU TV where I did the morning news program, to KPRC radio to do a radio talk show, and later by Dan himself for his fledgling radio startup, KSEV. Now, talk in the 80s was not like it is now. It wasn't one-sided and all political. We did interviews with authors, actors, politicians, reporters from the major news magazines all on a variety of subjects. I loved news, but also loved interviewing fascinating people.

Over the years that included Yitzhak Rabin, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, David Brinkley, Desmond Tutu, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Bob Woodward, Katherine Graham, George H.W. Bush, Pat Buchanan, George Will, Gore Vidal, Barbara Bush, Carl Bernstein, Henry Kissinger, Oliver North, C. Everett Koop, Bill Bradley, Kinky Friedman, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, George McGovern, Robert Mitchum, Lauren Bacall, Richard Dreyfuss, Ann Coulter, Al Franken, Robert McNamara, Walter Cronkite, Lesley Stahl, Carl Sagan, David Halberstam, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Hamilton Jordan, Henry Fonda, Joe Scarborough, Jay Leno, Roseanne Barr, Jesse Jackson, Charlton Heston, Oprah Winfrey, etc.

Not that I want to drop any names here, ahem. I had the chance to cover some meaningful events like the fall of the Berlin Wall...

... German reunification, the first Gulf War and Oslo Accords in the Middle East. Believe it or not, that's what news-talk radio used to be. But Dan also carried a syndicated talk show that was gaining traction with the public...

So, the radio game was changing, and so was Dan. When he hired me from KPRC, he was a pretty freewheeling guy. When he was a sportscaster, he celebrated the Oilers getting into the playoffs by having a couple of cheerleaders paint him blue on the air...

He also had a vasectomy live on the radio. The station parties at his house in Houston were great with coolers full of beer and a raucous time had by all.

But Dan fell under the sway of a rich local politician who led him to the Lord. And that's fine, but it ultimately led to all that you are seeing now. I won't go into my business dealings with Dan because I can't afford the lawyers he can, but suffice to say, I felt his Damascus Road experience involved a side trip to Vegas.

Which leads me to the subject of hypocrisy. When the uh, ethically-challenged Attorney General of the Lone Star State, Ken Paxton, was impeached for blatantly obvious misdeeds, Dan presided over the actual Senate trial that was loaded from the beginning. In fact, an embarrassing side note was Paxton's mistress being called to testify in front of the Senate, including his wife, who is an elected state Rep.

Dan made her testimony go away.

And let's be honest, the most humiliating part about being Paxton's side piece is admitting, well, you slept with Ken Paxton.

You would think that shady business dealings and marital infidelity would be anathema to Dan with his newfound and conspicuous piety, but apparently not.

Paxton chose, after all this, to challenge Senator John Cornyn in the upcoming Republican primary. And despite all that is known, including the elegant blonde pictured above, he is well ahead in the polls.

And now the long-suffering Angela Paxton has finally said no mas. She has filed for divorce from Ken after 38 years, citing "recent discoveries." I'm guessing those discoveries don't involve him playing too much golf or working too late.

But here again, according to a story in the Houston Chronicle, Texas evangelicals are rallying around our Ken, and many are giving Angela grief for publicly filing for divorce.

While I initially thought the champagne would be flowing at Cornyn headquarters, now I'm not so sure.

When Bill Clinton publicly tripped over his zipper in La'Affair de Lewinsky, I said on the air I felt he should step down. It would be more honorable than trying to outlast a tawdry affair in the public arena. I know, how quaint. But the word is that one discussion on Air Force One on the way back from the Texas flood visit was how to rearrange the political deck chairs to give Ken a shot at something, anything.

In fact, on the subject of adding something concrete to your prayer list, when a reporter asked Trump if people got the warnings they needed before the deluge, he called her evil for even bringing it up. Actually, what's evil is knowing the history of weather in Kerr County and doing nothing.

And that's my point. I have some good friends of other faiths, and some who have none at all. But when I get into a conversation about religion, these guys make it a tough case to argue. And I know the excuses.

Another example. We have a President who very publicly cheated on all his wives, but the argument seems to be, God often chooses imperfect men for a tough fight. It's the go-to get out of jail free card. You can toss in something about casting the first stone as well. And honestly, who among us is in a position to do that? And let's not get started on the Epstein stuff. So it appears that anything goes.

Except that it doesn't. And that's my naive point here, I guess. Yes, we have all fallen short. But other than apologizing, you don't argue that it's OK, for heaven's sake. As I suggested for Clinton, you take your lumps and do the right thing.

And for Abbott and Patrick, I refer you back to the verse about prayers without deeds. Prayer is wonderful, and I heartily recommend it. But then, get off your knees and go make good things happen. These guys have clout and Texas has billions. Put that to good use. Otherwise, a verse from the Book of Matthew seems to apply.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean." -Matthew 23:27