1 | Start Date | End Date | Headline | Text | Media | Media Credit | Media Caption | Media Thumbnail | Type | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | 12/30/1954 0:00:00 | 12/30/1954 0:00:00 | Veterans Land Board scandal opens the door to gubernatorial candidate Ralph Yarborough, who promised to clean house. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/e_rl_0067_pub1.jpg | Photo courtesy of Russell Lee Photograph Collection, E_RL_0067, at The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin. | Ralph Yarborough campaign, Paris, Texas, Aug. 14, 1954 | ||||
3 | 12/13/1954 0:00:00 | 12/13/1954 0:00:00 | The Observer's First Issue | Here in the Southwest there is room for a great truth-telling newspaper, its editor free, its editorials cast in a liberal and reasonable frame of mind, its dedication Thoreau’s “The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.” We are not now that newspaper, and we may never be; all we have is the motto and the will. Perhaps others will join us, and we will have a better Southwestern world for it. We feel that this may be a great adventure, and we hope you are with us. We will not beg you; we will convince you.<p>—The Editors</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19541213-issue-1.jpg | |||||
4 | 3/21/1955 0:00:00 | 3/21/1955 0:00:00 | Police Chief Defends Brothels | <p>Prostitution and gambling still proceed apace on the island. Everybody knows it, including the police. The situation is ready-made for bribery.</p> <p>We went in to talk to the Police and Fire Commissioner of Galveston, Walter Johnston. We wanted to ask him about an indirect charge in a legal indictment that he would have to be paid bribes if the whorehouses were to be kept open. Before we could get to this question, however, the chief remarked:</p> <p>"I don't have to discuss nothin'. I ain't even goin' to pass the time a day with you. Why should I?"</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>One of the most bizarre incidents ever to tickle the Galveston sense of humor was the intrusion of a "male madam," a man named Theodore Jackson Parker, into the Post Office district. A week before the district as a whole was shut down, Johnston ran Parker out of town.</p> <p>"It doesn't seem right to me that a man should operate on Post Office Street," Johnston said indignantly. “Why that's women's work.”</p><p>-Ronnie Dugger</p> | ||||||
5 | 6/1/1955 0:00:00 | 6/1/1955 0:00:00 | GIANT begins filming in Marfa | <i>Observer</i> associate editor Bill Brammer gets kicked off the set twice while researching "Unworldly Little Marfa" for the June 27 issue. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-195506-giant-poster.jpg | poster by Bill Gold | ||||
6 | 8/30/1956 0:00:00 | 8/30/1956 0:00:00 | A white mob in Mansfield prevents black students from enrolling in the high school. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19560912-eckhardt-mob-mansfield.jpg | illustration by Bob Eckhardt | |||||
7 | 5/2/1957 0:00:00 | 5/2/1957 0:00:00 | The Segregation Filibuster of 1957 | Abraham "Chick" Kazen, Henry Gonzalez and four other senators stage a 36-hour filibuster to block bills promoting school segregation. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19570507-kazen-gonzalez-filibuster.jpg | |||||
8 | 10/24/1956 0:00:00 | 10/24/1956 0:00:00 | Elvis Plays San Antonio | <p>“Hurry up, Daddyo,” the girl said. She had on a red knit sweater. “Lock ‘er up, George,” said one of the boys. They set out through the rows of parked cars for the far-off coliseum.</p> <p>Girls filed through the gates, girls with their dates, in pairs, alone, in cocktail dresses, in blue jeans and white shirts, in black slacks, in pink sweaters and black skirts. Pink and black are Elvis’s colors.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>He goes out into the mob. A roar rises from them; a scream so concerted, so terrifying, you stand agape, as though anesthetized, overpowered by sound alone. Flash bulbs flash. He reaches for the mike and starts to sing.</p> <p> —Ronnie Dugger</p> | ||||||
9 | 3/28/1959 0:00:00 | 3/28/1959 0:00:00 | Terrell Treats the Young, Skips by the Old | <p>Semi-officially Terrell is the second best of the state’s mental hospitals. Only the Austin state hospital is approved by the medical profession’s joint commission on hospitals, but both Austin and Terrell have the approval of the American Psychiatric Assn. ... These things considered, it was disquieting to hear the superintendent, Dr. R. C. Rowell, saying: “There’s not a patient in this hospital that’s getting as much treatment as I’d like him to get.”</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>The patients under intensive treatment and another 200 aged patients get “some pretty good treatment,” and another 1,100 to 1,200 patients get “some type of treatment.”</p> <p>As for the other 800 inmates—and inmates they are, the euphemisms do not prevail against locked doors—Terrell has little to offer but drugs, a daze, and death. “We do a pretty good job now on patients under 50,” he said. “But where we’ve fallen down is on these patients who have been in the hospital a number of years. With the new drugs, they have a lot of improvement, and they could continue to improve and get out of the hospital.” But, he said, after the drugs have done their work, he does not have enough doctors to carry the patients past relapses.</p> <p>Legacies from psychiatrically even darker decades, Rowell said, the aging sick are “our major problem.” Eleven hundred of his patients are 60 or older; 600 are 65 or over. Two years ago a patient died who had been in the hospital since 1885. One woman patient still living has been there 65 years.</p> <p>—Ronnie Dugger</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19590328-russell-lee-terrell.jpg | Russell Lee | A patient in isolation, "for her protection," at Terrell State Hospital. | |||
10 | 4/2/1957 0:00:00 | 4/2/1957 0:00:00 | Latin Vote Grows | <p>The fastest growing segment of the state’s population, the Latin-Americans, are undergoing a political awakening. [...] For the first time since Civil War days the Texas Senate has a Spanish-named legislator in Henry B. Gonzalez of Bexar County, where 175,000 Latin Americans reside. El Paso [...] elected its first Latin American mayor in its history three weeks ago, Raymond Telles.</p> <p>All over the state in school boards, city councils and county governments Spanish-named citizens for the past ten years have been taking their place as representatives in government where before they used to take a back seat.</p> <p> —Ramon Garces</p> | ||||||
11 | 11/27/1959 0:00:00 | 11/27/1959 0:00:00 | Legal Status of Women in Texas | <p>Texans like to brag and have reason to do so about ranches, cattle, oil, and many things, but not about the legal status of women. [...]</p> <p>Despite the fact that women now share in the responsibilities of citizenship, that is, voting, holding office, and serving on juries, there has been little change in the property rights, or perhaps more accurately the lack, of property rights of married women. As long as women remain single, they have the same rights with reference to their property as men, but with marriage they are subjected to certain disabilities.</p> <p>Texas is the only state in the union which retains the separate acknowledgement of a married woman. Such provisions are an insult to the intelligence of women and to the integrity of men.</p> <p>—Sarah T. Hughes</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19591127-sarah-t-hughes.jpg | Judge Sarah T. Hughes | ||||
12 | 11/22/1963 0:00:00 | 11/22/1963 0:00:00 | The <i>Observer</i> recounts President John F. Kennedy's final full day of life, when he visited San Antonio to dedicate the Aerospace Medical Center at Brooks AFB. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19631129-kennedy.jpg | ||||||
13 | 11/2/1962 0:00:00 | 11/2/1962 0:00:00 | On the Brink: A Plea for Human Survival | <p>The main thing now is to try to quiet the voices calling for the invasion of Cuba. We may hope that the news of the Russian ships turning back means that Khrushchev was, indeed, seeing how far he could push us. With a cooling off period we may find a way to resolve the question of the missiles now in Cuba. But Fulton Lewis Jr. and Wayne Poucher and such ilk are already crowing that all you have to do is stand up to the Russians and they fold, so let’s invade. It is not enough to support Kennedy’s relative restraint; it is necessary to anticipate the next wild plunge into which the right will try to force us and to argue in public, in the newspapers, against it. [...]</p> <p>Perhaps if we get through this, it will have been for the best. For now we have felt the hot pound of fear. Now we have sensed that the posturings and chest thumpings are hollow, indeed, when war means, not a draft call and a troop ship, but death at once for everyone, death so impersonal and general, its prospect extinguishes even fear. Extinguishes fear and stirs a close, right here in this room, with these whom I love, horror of their death tonight. Perhaps purged of our hate by this fear or this understanding we can realize, we can believe, that we must, to the extent that we do anything civic, anything public, anything political, work directly and religiously for human survival.</p> <p> —Ronnie Dugger</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-soviet-nuclear-ballistic_missile.jpg | photo courtesy Central Intelligence Agency | Soviet medium-range ballistic missile in Red Square, Moscow. | |||
14 | 4/18/1963 0:00:00 | 4/18/1963 0:00:00 | Los Cinco Candidatos | <p>Crystal City was a ready-made situation for a local test […] because it is an Anglo-dominated town with a mexicano majority… The gringos say they are not afraid of this election. They say they never worry until the day before the election, then they go out and buy the vote. "Give a Mexican a dollar and he will sell himself," they say. But this is no longer true. The mexicanos’ eyes are open, and the price is higher now. The man who wants to buy a vote must pay liberty, respect, dignity, education for the children, a higher standard of living for all—that is the new price. […]</p> <p>Within seconds there was pandemonium: the winners were hoisted up on shoulders […] Handshaking, horns, a couple of mexicano versions of the rebel yell, and remarkably suddenly they fled to cars and dispersed under the gazes of the Rangers.</p> <p> — Larry Goodwyn</p> | ||||||
15 | 11/22/1963 0:00:00 | 11/22/1963 0:00:00 | The President Is Sworn In | <p>I had just reached home from the Trade Mart, where a large and enthusiastic crowd had gathered to see and hear President John F. Kennedy. We waited in vain, for he had been assassinated as he was leaving the downtown area of Dallas. Numbed and hardly realizing what had happened, I drove home. [...]</p> <p>I phoned the court to tell the clerk where I was. Her response was that Barefoot Sanders, U.S. attorney, wanted to speak to me. [...] “The Vice-President wants you to swear him in as President. Can you do it? How soon can you get to the airport?” [...]</p> <p>The Vice-President said Mrs. Kennedy wanted to be present for the ceremony, and in a very few minutes she appeared. [...] The Vice-President asked Mrs. Johnson to stand on his right, Mrs. Kennedy on his left, and with his hand on the Bible, slowly and reverently repeated the oath after me: “I do solemnly swear that I will perform the duties of President of the United States to the best of my ability and defend, protect, and preserve the Constitution of the United States.” That was all to the oath I had in my hand, but I added, “So help me God,” and he said it after me. It seemed that that needed to be said.</p> <p>—Sarah T. Hughes</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Lyndon_B._Johnson_taking_the_oath_of_office_November_1963.jpg | Cecil W. Stoughton | Judge Sarah T. Hughes, lower left with back to camera, swears in Lyndon B. Johnson as president of the United States, Nov. 22, 1963. | |||
16 | 11/3/1964 0:00:00 | 11/3/1964 0:00:00 | Ralph Yarborough wins reelection to U.S. Senate, defeating Republican challenger George H.W. Bush. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19640417-ralph-yarborough.jpg | ||||||
17 | 1/10/1967 0:00:00 | 1/10/1967 0:00:00 | Barbara Jordan becomes the first African-American woman to serve in the Texas Senate. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19670110-us-congress-barbara-jordan.jpg | photo courtesy U.S. Congress | |||||
18 | 5/27/1966 0:00:00 | 5/27/1966 0:00:00 | A Conversation With Miss Jordan | <p>A child of the Houston ghetto, Miss [Barbara] Jordan practices law from a walk-up office on Lyons Avenue, in the steamy middle of that city’s Fifth Ward. Her offices are a cool, elegant oasis. She works in a small room with a huge desk and a high-backed leather chair much like the one she will occupy in the Senate. On the desk are scattered briefs, newspapers, law books, campaign material, and letters to be signed, and there is a small brass version of the scales of justice. […]</p> <p>She uses her hands when she talks, and the way she talks is unusual—a striking compound of Houston and Boston, clipped sentences delivered in a measured tempo, a rather deep voice which converts anecdotes to pronouncements with a querulous twist at the end.</p> <p> — Ronnie Dugger</p> | ||||||
19 | 1/24/1969 0:00:00 | 1/24/1969 0:00:00 | Last Flight to Johnson City | <p>I have no idea of the mood in Air Force One, but sitting there in Air Force “Two” I imagined it to be one of mixed relief and melancholy. One of history’s most colorful, controversial, and sensitive presidents was through, and on his way back home. From persons close to him I had learned that his last days in office were extremely unhappy ones; that he seemed inwardly obsessed with the fear that he was unpopular—almost in the high school sense—and that Americans were thinking he had not tried his damndest. [...]</p> <p>Squinting through a telephoto lens I could see Johnson clearly as he emerged at the door of Air Force One. He stood there with an almost tearful smile for a minute or more, surveying the throng of people. The Longhorn band played a “Hello Lyndon” that was a little too fierce and brassy for the occasion. For the mood was pretty solemn. The happiness that afternoon was not that any victory had been won, but that a battle was over.</p> <p>The sky was overcast and getting dark, and the portable TV lights at the foot of the passenger ramp gave Johnson’s face the radiant glow of a cheap religious painting. For the first time in years he looked genuinely happy. He spoke briefly from a small black platform that this time had no presidential seal. [...]</p> <p>Afterwards the former president, smiling grandly, stepped over to the Cyclone fence and began shaking hand after hand after hand. Then he took the little Jet Star on to Johnson City.</p> <p>—Bill Helmer</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19690124-helmer-lbj.jpg | photo by Bill Helmer | LBJ lands in Austin after leaving the White House for the last time in January 1969. | |||
20 | 8/19/1966 0:00:00 | 8/19/1966 0:00:00 | Blood-Soaked Textbooks, Charles Whitman Shooting | The man on that Tower was no berserk killer. He was more a mad craftsman. Charles Whitman carried out his work methodically, soberly, and with extraordinary skill not found in an impassioned murderer. Alone on that parapet, viewing the world below him through the cross hairs of a telescopic sight, he singlehandedly turned a quiet campus into a battlefield littered with dead and wounded. It took time to realize what that man was doing, and it took even longer to appreciate how well he did it. Some died looking up at him, not yet believing. <p>— Bill Helmer</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19660819-ut-yearbook-charles-whitman.jpg | photo courtesy 1963 student yearbook, University of Texas | Charles Whitman | |||
21 | 2/6/1970 0:00:00 | 2/6/1970 0:00:00 | An Ecological Armageddon | <p>Even on clear days, a temperature inversion often traps industrial crud and automobile exhaust, turning humid Houston a dirty brown. The polluted air stings the eyes and beclouds the lungs. All over town one’s nostrils are offended by a chemical stench emanating from hundreds of smokestacks. It was on just such a day recently that President Nixon’s Water Pollution Control Advisory Board met in Houston to see what kind of progress the state has made in improving its environment since the last time the board met in Texas two and a half years ago. Other than a new sense of urgency on the part of the state’s citizens, the board could not detect much progress.</p> <p>The citizens’ board listened to two days of testimony on BOD content of Ship Channel waters, confusingly technical results of estuarine research and glowing reports of the pollution control activities of a myriad of overlapping local, state, and federal agencies. But when it came down to simple and vital questions, such as whether Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel are in better condition than they were two and half years ago, the board could get few straight answers from the experts.</p> <p>It was from their own on-site investigation and from private citizens that board members learned just how serious Houston-area pollution is. After looking at the Houston Ship Channel, Board Chairman Carl L. Klein, assistant secretary of water quality and research for the Department of Interior, said that the stinking liquid contained practically no water at all, just industrial and municipal effluents. “It’s too thick to drink and too thin to plow,” he observed.</p> <p>— Kaye Northcott</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19700206-shel-hershorn-houston-refineries.jpg | photo by Shel Hershorn | Houston area refineries | |||
22 | 6/18/1976 0:00:00 | 6/18/1976 0:00:00 | Ivins Says Goodbye | <p>What I’m going to tell you is more than a fact. It is a Truth. I have spent six years checking it out, and I know it to be true. The people who subscribe to <i>The Texas Observer</i> are good people. In fact, you’re the best people in this state. I don’t care if you think that’s pretentious or sentimental—it’s just true.</p> <p>If I got to naming you, I would never stop, so I won’t. But please believe me that all of you whom I know and many of you whom I know only by letter are in my mind as I write this—even if I do forget your names half the time. Always excepting, of course, the turkey who sends me hate mail after my annual gun-control editorial. Turkey, turkey, turkey. I wanted to call this “The Long Goodbye,” but Kaye wouldn’t let me. She wanted to call it, “Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.”</p> <p>I love you. Good-bye, my friends.</p> <p>–Molly Ivins</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Molly_Kaye.jpg | photo by Alan Pogue | Editors Molly Ivins and Kaye Northcott in the <i>Observer</i> office in 1975. | |||
23 | 12/12/1975 0:00:00 | 12/12/1975 0:00:00 | How Not to Buy an Oil Well: Big D Scam | Dallas has oil slicks, but not the ecological-disaster kind. These slicks are smooth-talking salesmen who lure the investor into parting with about $2,000 per oil or gas well and then beat him out of every cent they can get. It works so well that many victims don’t even realize they’ve been taken. This multi-million dollar scam has grown to the point of being a national scandal. A federal loophole, a curious lethargy on the part of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and zilch action by the State of Texas combined to make Dallas a con capitol. <p>— Earl Golz and John Cranfill</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19751212-oil-scam.jpg | |||||
24 | 12/25/1970 0:00:00 | 12/25/1970 0:00:00 | The Joe Louis Addition | <p>The Joe Louis Addition is a tiny, all-black section on the Trinity River bottoms in the city of Fort Worth. The people who live there pay taxes to the city of Fort Worth.</p> <p>There are no city water lines in Joe Louis, nor are there sewer lines. The streets are not paved, the garbage is not collected, the rats are not exterminated. The children of Joe Louis do not go to school in Fort Worth. There is no public transportation anywhere near the area. Neither the housing code nor the health code is enforced.</p> <p>The homes in Joe Louis are hopelessly substandard, but the city’s housing inspectors have mercifully failed to condemn them and evict their owners. Mercifully, because there is no place the residents of the Joe Louis Addition can go. There is no decent housing for poor people in Fort Worth—none available and none being built.</p> <p> — Molly Ivins</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19701225-michael-kostink-joe-louis-addition-fort-worth-e1417823078526.jpg | photo by Michael Kostink | The Joe Louis water supply. | |||
25 | 2/16/1979 0:00:00 | 2/16/1979 0:00:00 | A Death In Dimmitt | <p>It was here on the morning of December 8 that Isidro and Rachel Aguinagas decided their infant son should be seen by a doctor. They took him to the public clinic in Dimmitt, where the child was found to be feverish, suffering from respiratory infection and dehydration and nearly dead. The doctor there told them to take the child at once to nearby Plains Memorial, a tax-supported public hospital, while he called ahead to have emergency care readied. The Aguinagases rushed to the hospital, but were turned away (so they later charged) by hospital administrator Jack Newsom, who told them through an interpreter that unless they could produce a $400 cash deposit the baby would not be admitted. Isidro Aguinagas’s account of the incident: “The administrator asked me if I was working. I said I had found some work gathering corn. He said, ‘If you are working, then you should have money.’ I said, ‘But I have not been able to work these few days because of the snow in the fields.’ He said, ‘No money, no nothing.’”</p> <p>The Aguinagases then drove 45 miles to Tulia in adjoining Swisher County, but their son was denied admission at the county hospital there also, this time because they were not county residents. By now the child’s condition had worsened, so they headed back toward Dimmitt with the intention of finding someone at the county courthouse who would help. But on the way, Isidro Aguinagas Jr. died.</p> <p>— P.C. Jennings</p> | ||||||
26 | 2/12/1971 0:00:00 | 2/12/1971 0:00:00 | The <i>Observer's</i> first reporting on the Sharpstown Scandal, a stock-fraud scheme that prompted sweeping ethics reforms. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19710212-sharpstown.jpg | ||||||
27 | 11/7/1972 0:00:00 | 11/7/1972 0:00:00 | Barbara Jordan becomes the first Southern black woman elected to Congress since Reconstruction. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19760407-ohalloran-barbara-jordan.jpg | photo by Thomas J. O'Halloran, U.S. News & World Report | |||||
28 | 1/22/1973 0:00:00 | 1/22/1973 0:00:00 | LBJ dies at age 64, having spent his last days agonizing that he might be remembered as a champion not of civil rights, but of war. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-yoichi-r-okamoto-lbj.jpg | photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto, White House Press Office | |||||
29 | 12/27/1974 0:00:00 | 12/27/1974 0:00:00 | The Observer Turns 20 | The editors write that becoming a “respectable” institution rather than “that pinko rag” leaves them “uncharacteristically mellow.” | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19741227-observer-turns-20.jpg | |||||
30 | 4/4/1981 0:00:00 | 4/4/1981 0:00:00 | Henry Cisneros becomes Mayor of San Antonio. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/19810404_kri_a27_0661.jpg | JB Hazlett/San Antonio Express/San Antonio Express-News/Zumapress.com | San Antonio Mayor-elect Henry Cisneros gives a thumbs-up on election night. | ||||
31 | 8/14/1981 0:00:00 | 8/14/1981 0:00:00 | The Second Best Little Whorehouse in Texas | <p>This is not really a story about a house of ill repute “for working girls.” It’s more of a tale about 25 years in a place where everybody hustles in different ways. One does not always get to know all the others in the Biblical sense, but one certainly learns about them in every other way.</p> <p>The Texas Capitol, built for habitation by giants, has always been occupied by some giants and some pygmies. The giants who roam those grand chambers and halls are stars on stage. Like all stars, they are surrounded by groupies, and as is true for all groupies, the wish of the star is instantly met by individual groupies or by the whole group. There are the young groupies, and then there are the old ones, lobbyists of one brand or another.</p> <p>I was a young groupie and later a star, and now I’m an old groupie.</p> <p>—A.R. “Babe” Schwartz</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19810814-keith-dannemiller-ar-babe-schwartz-.jpg | photo by Keith Dannemiller | Sen. A.R. "Babe" Schwartz in the Texas Legislature. | |||
32 | 12/4/1981 0:00:00 | 12/4/1981 0:00:00 | What to Expect in Houston | <p>At Houston’s city hall on a recent afternoon, the press secretary for Mayor-elect Kathryn J. Whitmire exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke, gritted her teeth and spoke sternly into the telephone. On the other end of Twila Coffey’s line was Marvin Zindler, the quixotic TV newsman who blew the whistle on the Chicken Ranch. “Marvin,” she snapped, “my name is not ‘Honey.’”</p> <p>It was not really an important event, but it was one more signal, if one more were needed, that the nation’s fifth largest city will no longer be a stronghold of “good-old-boy,” Southern-drawl government.</p> <p>—Paul Sweeney</p> | ||||||
33 | 10/23/1981 0:00:00 | 10/23/1981 0:00:00 | Reflections on the Failure of Texas Literature | <p>Texas writers have paid too much attention to nature, not enough to human nature, and they have been too ready to fall back on the bucolic memoir or country idyll rather than attempting novels, poems, and dramas. Minor forms only rarely prompt major books, and the lack we suffer from most is a lack of major books.</p> <p>So far, by my count, we have a total of one.</p> <p>Our literature is not evenly minor—some Texas books are better than others—but none of it is major.</p> <p> —Larry McMurtry</p> | ||||||
34 | 2/21/1986 0:00:00 | 2/21/1986 0:00:00 | Lost in Space | No sooner had the Challenger spacecraft tragically exploded than every neuron of the news media sprang into action—the chief purpose to defend the space industry, lest we for one moment question the value of peopled spacecraft. [...] The fact is that, of the $17 billion budgeted for the space program in 1984, $6.5 billion was budgeted for NASA while $10.25 billion was budgeted through the Defense Department for military space programs. With the entry of Star Wars into the budget picture, that disproportion can only grow.<p>—Geoff Rips</p> | ||||||
35 | 2/20/1987 0:00:00 | 2/20/1987 0:00:00 | The Emerging Hispanic Vote | “We have the numbers, we have the strength, and together, we can do anything,” State Rep. Lena Guerrero told Chicano students recently at the University of Texas. That sounds a little like the usual old political rhetoric—but the numbers show that Guerrero is absolutely right. Chicano voters could call the tune that Texas candidates dance to. <p>—Mary Lenz</p> | ||||||
36 | 9/14/1984 0:00:00 | 9/14/1984 0:00:00 | Far Right Writes GOP Platform | The speechmakers were marionettes, reciting pre-scripted harangues; the delegates were extras, going through the motions; the main event, the nominations of Reagan and Bush, was so routine, the roll calls were combined into one. The only real news at the Republican convention [in Dallas] was the adoption, without a floor fight, of a party platform that was written by and for the far right with the participation of the White House. <p>—Ronnie Dugger</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19840914-texas-observer.jpg | |||||
37 | 12/7/1982 0:00:00 | 12/7/1982 0:00:00 | Texas Reinstates the Death Penalty | Convicted murderer Charlie Brooks Jr. becomes the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by injection. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19880422-jim-rockwall-texas-death-penalty.jpg | photo by Jim Rockwall | ||||
38 | 8/18/1983 0:00:00 | 8/18/1983 0:00:00 | Hurricane Alicia slammed into the Texas coast, leaving 21 dead and causing more than $1 billion in damage. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19830818-noaa-hurricane-alicia.jpg | photo couresty NOAA | |||||
39 | 10/14/1987 0:00:00 | 10/14/1987 0:00:00 | 18-month-old Jessica McClure falls 22 feet down an abandoned well at a private day-care center in Midland. Hundreds of rescuers work 58 hours to free her. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19890719-susan-biddle-president-george-hw-bush-jessica-mcclure-white-house.jpg | photo by Susan Biddle | President George H.W. Bush holds Jessica McClure in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. | ||||
40 | 2/23/1990 0:00:00 | 2/23/1990 0:00:00 | The Observer Endorses Ann Richards in Democratic Primary for Governor | <p>Ann Richards has proven herself a capable administrator at the State Treasury. She has advanced the interests of women and minorities, provided small, minority-owned contractors with the opportunity to bid on government work and purchases, and improved the operation of the agency she directs. Richards is something considerably less than an exemplary candidate for progressive Democrats. …</p> <p>Yet in what has become an executioner’s song campaign, with Jim Mattox and Mark White engaged in a ghoulish fight over bragging rights to 32 corpses, Richards’s silence on some issues sounds like eloquence. Better, we argue, to recognize that political discourse is dead than to accept what Mark White and Jim Mattox offer up in its stead. After months of grappling with the issue we endorse Ann Richards. Through a long, difficult campaign she has exemplified grace under pressure. She has avoided all the right temptations. And she is probably the most electable candidate in the Democratic field.</p> <p> —Lou Dubose</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19901026-bill-leissner-ann-richards-jim-harrington-cesar-chavez.jpg | photo by Bill Leissner | Ann Richards, Jim Harrington and Cesar Chavez | |||
41 | 2/14/1992 0:00:00 | 2/14/1992 0:00:00 | Gib Lewis Steps Down | God we're going to miss House Speaker Gib Lewis. It’s not often we get a target like that in public office. [...] There was his immortal performance on Disability Day, 1985: Disability Day is when the state of Texas honors its handicapped citizens for their efforts to get better access to public buildings. We never appropriate a nickel for the purpose, but we always honor their efforts. So both houses just resoluted up a storm, the governor issued a proclamation and the Gibber presided over the joint session. Public access for the handicapped at the Capitol is not all that great, but a bunch of them managed to wedge their wheel chairs into the back of the gallery. The Speaker read both resolutions and the proclamation and didn’t make hardly any mistakes—we were all so proud. Then he looked up at the gallery and said, “And now, would y’all stand and be recognized?” <p>—Molly Ivins</p> | ||||||
42 | 10/28/1994 0:00:00 | 10/28/1994 0:00:00 | Why Is Ann Richards Struggling? | <p>During the past four years the state’s economy has improved, there are more jobs than ever before, the crime rate has dropped, student test scores are rising, Texas still does not have an income tax and the state has a $2.2 billion surplus. So why is Governor Ann Richards, who remains personally popular, struggling to win re-election?</p> <p>Bush has pulled even with Richards for a variety of reasons, having a former president for a father not being the least. But he also has effectively framed the debate while limiting his exposure to press scrutiny. He has adopted the national Republican line in hammering at crime and welfare, even when the facts show that the crime rate is dropping virtually across the board in Texas and the state’s basic welfare payments already amount to a miniscule amount of the state budget. Still he has managed to put Richards on the defensive and left her unable to cash in on the relatively booming Texas economy. Two-thirds of the Texans polled said the country’s political system needs a drastic overhaul, and that cannot be good news for any incumbent.</p> <p>—James Cullen</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-1990-ave-bonar-ann-richards-dallas-debate.jpg | photo by ©1990 Ave Bonar | After a brutal primary debate in Dallas, Ann Richards huddled with her media consultants, Austin-based Mark McKinnon, left, and Washington-based Bob Squier. | |||
43 | 9/18/1992 0:00:00 | 9/18/1992 0:00:00 | On the Clinton Bus | <p>It is a show, and a good one at that. I’d recommend it for everyone, regardless of political persuasion, who enjoys vintage American politics.</p> <p>Our political life is now so dominated by television that it’s wonderfully pleasant to be able to wander down to the courthouse — or the mall — in your own hometown and listen to the guy who wants to be President while he’s out there sweating in the sun with everyone else.</p> <p>That the entire show is orchestrated for television is just one of the facts of contemporary life. Clinton is an exceptionally good campaigner. I make this observation in the same spirit in which one would note that Joe Montana is an artist on the football field, even if one were a Cowboys fan. What is, is. The “liberal media” is not inventing Bill Clinton.</p> <p>A couple of notable things about Clinton as a campaigner: His stamina is incredible, and he tends to get stronger as the day goes on. He blends gentle ridicule of the whole Bush era with a “We can do it” pitch that is actually classic Reagan — we’re the optimists; they’re the pessimists.</p> <p>—Molly Ivins</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19920918-bill-hillary-clinton-.jpg | photo by Karen Dickey | Bill and Hillary Clinton in Austin | |||
44 | 2/9/1996 0:00:00 | 2/9/1996 0:00:00 | Farewell to Barbara Jordan, Teacher | <p>Since her death last month, most of the tributes to Barbara Jordan have focused on her public career in the Congress and the Texas Legislature. Most ended with her 1979 retirement from Congress, followed by a brief mention that she had taught at the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs—as though everything after Washington were mere epilogue. Many of her admirers, then as now, must have wondered: why did this most impressive of politicians give up political power just when she’d accumulated enough to make her a national figure? Some speculated that her multiple sclerosis had left her too enervated to continue fighting the political wars.</p> <p>If those people ever sat a few feet away from her in class, as I did in the fall of 1986, they would have been quickly disabused of the notion that Jordan was too tired to fight. The truth is much simpler: Barbara Jordan was, at heart, a teacher. […]</p> <p>In an age of private greed, she taught public virtue.</p> <p>—Brett Campbell</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19960209-alan-pogue-barbara-jordan.jpg | photo by Alan Pogue | Barbara Jordan | |||
45 | 5/22/1998 0:00:00 | 5/22/1998 0:00:00 | On The Line at IBP | <p>The electrically-powered meatcutting tool known as “hock cutter” looks like a big steel claw with a handle on one end. It is possible to grasp the hock cutter’s handle with one hand and, by pushing a button, close its curved inner edge around the hind leg of a skinned cow carcass. Like a twig in the blades of a hedge-clipper, the leg is snipped off in approximately two seconds. If you are the worker assigned to cut hocks at the IBP meatpacking plant in Amarillo, a couple of seconds is all the time you’ve got: thousand-pound carcasses hung from a chain move toward you constantly, at a rate of 380 to 390 head per hour, or one carcass about every nine seconds. That’s nine seconds in which to grab the leg with your right hand, use the hock cutter, held in your left, to cut off a hoof and about ten inches of leg, dump this cut-off limb down a waste chute, and dip the hock cutter in a sterilizing solution. [...] On the evening of April 4, 1997, B-shift worker Chris Escamilla, who was twenty at the time, was assigned to the top-line hock cutter job by his twenty-six-year-old foreman, Shane Leal. Escamilla had worked at IBP since 1994, primarily as a rumper—skinning carcasses with an air knife—but never as a top-line hock cutter. [...]</p> <p>It had been previously noted that the trolley man tended to bump the hock cutter operator. It had also been observed that the aluminum safety guards on either side of the hock cutter blade were not functioning properly. Escamilla had been at his post for a couple hours when he felt a bump and, the next thing he knew, “there was half my hand laying on the ground,” he told an Amarillo jury last month. “I went into shock, picked up my fingers, and took off running. …”</p> <p>In a 1997 deposition, plant nurse Chris Rudd claimed that in 1996, between 1,200 and 1,300 injuries serious enough to be reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had occurred[...]. That translates into an injury rate of 37.5 to 40.6 per 100 employees. Assuming that very few managers get hurt, it’s somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of production workers.</p> <p>—Karen Olsson</p> | ||||||
46 | 8/20/1992 0:00:00 | 8/20/1992 0:00:00 | President George H.W. Bush accepts his party’s nomination for a second term at the Republican National Convention held at Houston’s Astrodome. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19920918-george-hw-bush-texas-observer.jpg | ||||||
47 | 4/19/1993 0:00:00 | 4/19/1993 0:00:00 | An FBI siege at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco ends with a fire that kills 76 people. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/branchdavidians.jpg | screenshot from CNN.com | |||||
48 | 1/17/1995 0:00:00 | 1/17/1995 0:00:00 | George W. Bush, son of a president and part-owner of a baseball team, is inaugurated as the 46th governor of the state of Texas. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19950127-george-w-bush-texas-observer.jpg | ||||||
49 | 6/12/1999 0:00:00 | 6/12/1999 0:00:00 | George W. Bush announces his intention to campaign for the presidency of the United States of America. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-19990625-jana-birchum-george-w-bush.jpg | photo by Jana Birchum | |||||
50 | 6/23/2000 0:00:00 | 6/23/2000 0:00:00 | Color of Justice | <p>When you think about crack cocaine, you think of burglaries, pawned televisions, and gang violence. You don’t ordinarily think of shoveling shit. But that’s what the drug life meant to Donnie Smith, who was, until an extraordinary and controversial drug sting last summer, part of the crack problem in the tiny Panhandle town of Tulia.</p> <p>Swisher County attacked its crack problem with the sort of campaign that has become commonplace since Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs almost two decades ago. Using funds from a regional drug task force, the local sheriff hired an undercover agent, who began making buys in and around Tulia. Only a select few knew about the deep cover operation. But even those who did were not prepared for the results: over an eighteen-month period, in a town so small it doesn’t even have a Dairy Queen, the agent allegedly made more than 100 controlled buys of illegal narcotics. Early on the morning of July 23, the arrests finally came. By the end of the week, it was evident that the forty-one suspects targeted by the sting had something in common. Thirty-five of the arrestees came from Tulia’s tiny black community, which numbers no more than 350. Ten percent of the town’s black population had been taken down by one undercover agent.</p> <p>—Nate Blakeslee</p> | ||||||
51 | 7/2/2004 0:00:00 | 7/2/2004 0:00:00 | Dems Da Breaks | The spectacle of thousands of Democrats sitting in unintentional silence seemed an apt metaphor for a party with little voice in the current political debate. The GOP controls every statewide office and both houses of the Legislature. As the Democrats gathered for their biannual convention, at the George H. Brown Convention Center, the party that once dominated Texas had become the political version of basketball’s Washington Generals, those earnest losers who offer themselves up as fodder for the showboating Harlem Globetrotters. <p> —Dave Mann</p> | ||||||
52 | 9/28/2001 0:00:00 | 9/28/2001 0:00:00 | The Why Question | <p>In the week following the events of September 11, the powers that be have focused on questions that begin with “how” and “who.” The only people asking “why,” it seems, are those who have lost family and friends. And they are asking the kinds of private, painful questions that nobody can answer: Why my son and not hers, why now, why me? We should join them, because the victims were our people, too, and the tragedy diminishes us all. The first colors displayed in the aftermath should have been black.</p> <p>Instead they were red, white, and blue, and the time for mourning has been callously shortened by the Bush administration’s hasty call for war. We now have precious little time left to ask the “why” question that should have been asked long ago: Why is the U.S. hated so?</p> <p>Our leaders have little interest in starting a national dialogue on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. “America was targeted for attack because we are the brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity in the world,” Bush declared the evening of the attack, as though the terrorists were a gaggle of moths. Why they go to the light we cannot say; it simply can’t be explained. In fact, it can be, but Bush prefers the stereotype, handily encouraged by the national news media, of the Muslim zealot, who needs no reason for his actions–his creed drives him to acts of madness. Certainly, there is a madness in any man who directs such an atrocity, but that madness did not develop in a vacuum. Let’s be clear: There can be no justification for such a crime, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. But that does not mean its impetus cannot be understood.</p> <p> —The Editors</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20010912-kin-man-hui-jennifer-sekua-utsa-911-vigil.jpg | Photo by © Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News/ZUMAPRESS.com) | Student Jennifer Sekua listens to speakers during a community vigil at the University of Texas at San Antonio on Sept. 12, 2001, in remembrance of the victims of terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. | |||
53 | 8/29/2003 0:00:00 | 8/29/2003 0:00:00 | Rise of the Machine | In Austin, Texas, home to the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney, a grand jury is empanelled. Its mission is to investigate one of the most audacious electoral efforts seen in Texas since Lyndon Johnson stole the 1948 U.S. Senate election from Coke Stevenson. The inquiry revolves around whether business leaders and Republicans, including possibly U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land), conspired to break state law to funnel corporate cash into local elections. At the center of the scheme is the Texas Association of Business (TAB), which purports to represent business and chambers of commerce, but in reality has become a de facto appendage of the Republican Party. <p>—Jake Bernstein</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20030829-doug-potter-78th-texas-legislature.jpg | Illustration by Doug Potter | ||||
54 | 2/9/2007 0:00:00 | 2/9/2007 0:00:00 | The Texas Observer Commemorates Molly Ivins' Life | Yes, Miss Molly was a great defender of principle and a mighty chastiser of sinners. But what I will remember is her powerful warmth and exquisite good manners and that beautiful smile. We’ve all known great defenders and chastisers who were about as friendly as a fence post, and a sort of general prickliness among fellow writers and liberals. And then there was Molly, who was ever cheerful and loved to be with her people and was so generous to readers and listeners. That’s the one I remember. <p>—Garrison Keillor</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20070209-molly-ivins-texas-observer-beloveds.jpg | |||||
55 | 2/23/2007 0:00:00 | 2/23/2007 0:00:00 | Hidden in Plain Sight | The investigation is not closed: In January the local district attorney formally requested assistance from the state attorney general’s office in prosecuting the case. The Rangers were not summoned by Texas Youth Commision administrators, but by a volunteer math tutor frustrated by what he considered the agency’s own unwillingness to investigate. And the agency’s response to the problems at Pyote, records obtained by the <i>Observer</i> show, was anything but diligent. An internal agency review of the incident—which to date very few people have read—documents a string of missed opportunities to uncover the abuse at Pyote. The abuse was real: Internal agency documents describe in considerable detail numerous incidents of sexual misconduct that TYC administrators were able to confirm at the facility. The story of how the scandal in Pyote unfolded—or failed to unfold—raises a number of troubling questions, among them how these two men avoided prosecution and how the story has stayed under the radar for so long. Perhaps most confounding of all: How can it be that since last summer, John Paul Hernandez has been the principal of a charter school in Midland, where he supervises about 200 high school students the same age as his alleged victims at Pyote? <p>—Nate Blakeslee</p> | ||||||
56 | 8/29/2005 0:00:00 | 8/29/2005 0:00:00 | Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. Texas—especially Houston—welcomes refugees with open arms. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-nyxolyno-cangemi-new-orleans-katrina-survivor-flyover.jpg | photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class NyxoLyno Cangemi | U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Shawn Beaty of Long Island, N.Y., looks for survivors of Hurricane Katrina over New Orleans on Aug. 30, 2005. | ||||
57 | 9/28/2005 0:00:00 | 9/28/2005 0:00:00 | A Travis County grand jury indicts U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on money-laundering charges. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-us-congress-tom-delay.jpg | photo courtesy United States Congress | |||||
58 | 11/7/2006 0:00:00 | 11/7/2006 0:00:00 | Talk-radio host and author of <i>The Second Most Important Book You Will Ever Read</i> Dan Patrick is elected to his first term in the Texas Senate. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-texas-senate-dan-patrick.jpg | photo courtesy Texas Senate | |||||
59 | 2/12/2010 0:00:00 | 2/12/2010 0:00:00 | WalMart, I Can’t Quit You | <p>Why am I defensive about Walmart? Let me tell you about the long-gone downtowns, my friends.</p> <p>Before I do, I know you have some wonderful, cheerful, perhaps tearful, stories about the downtowns of your youth. Me too. I don’t want to hear them.</p> <p>Let me tell you, the late downtowns in East Texas burgs were usually small stores run by locals. They generally priced things three times more than they were worth. Maybe they had to, but I don’t care. I don’t want to pay $30 for a hammer and a fistful of nails. If I wanted a banana, I had to go to another store. If I wanted to pick up a pair of shoes, another store.</p> <p>The parking was minimal, and the choices were few.</p> <p>If you’re poor and barely making it, or even if your income is middle-of-the-road, it’s good to get what you need at slashed prices, anytime of the day, seven days a week, in a big, ugly, over-lit store that closes only on Christmas and half a day on Christmas Eve. If you forgot to get a gift card and a six pack of tall boys, you have to think, “To hell with downtown.” What we got now in our downtown are specialty stores that provide things we can’t get at Walmart, like maybe a stuffed deer head for that special place over the mantle. The stuff we really need, hell, it’s at Walmart.</p> <p>—Joe R. Lansdale</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-casper-vildrik-justesen-walmart.jpg | photo by Casper Vildrik Justesen | ||||
60 | 11/13/2013 0:00:00 | 11/13/2013 0:00:00 | Texas’ Other Death Penalty | <p>Gov. Rick Perry rejected billions of dollars in federal funding to expand Medicaid, funding that should have brought access to more than a million Texans, including many St. Vincent’s patients.</p> <p>Perry’s refusal is catastrophic health policy. For patients, it means that seeking medical care will still require risking bankruptcy, and may lead nowhere. [...] Because they can no longer count on UTMB to accept their patients, UTMB doctors now refer many to St. Vincent’s. They’ll treat someone for a heart attack (because that’s an emergency covered by EMTALA), then refer them to us for follow-up, even though we don’t have a cardiologist. They’ll stabilize a patient after her third stroke, put her on blood thinners and send her to us. [...]</p> <p>As Howard Brody, director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities, has shown, 9,000 Texans per year will die needlessly as a result of our failure to expand Medicaid. However, because dying patients are often too sick, exhausted and wracked with pain to protest, UTMB and states like Texas aren’t forced to reckon with the consequences of their policy decisions.</p> <p>Because the very sick and the dying may not be able to speak about these issues, health-care providers—particularly the providers of the so-called “safety net”—must do so. It is in our clinics, in the bodies of our patients, where the consequences get played out.</p> <p>—Rachel Pearson</p> | ||||||
61 | 9/4/2013 0:00:00 | 9/4/2013 0:00:00 | The Horror Every Day | <p>Beatings take time. They make noise. Witnesses can gather and start filming. Shootings, on the other hand, are fast. They’re usually over as quickly as they begin, which may be one reason why, in the past six years, not a single Houston police officer has been disciplined for shooting someone.</p> <p>Between 2007 and 2012, HPD officers were involved in 550 incidents in which either a citizen or animal was injured or killed by a police officer’s bullet, according to agency records.</p> <p>Internal Affairs investigated each incident and determined that every single shooting was justified. [...]</p> <p>Out of 706 complaints about excessive force, HPD disciplined only 15 officers. For 550 shootings, HPD disciplined none. The message is clear: Either Houston police almost never abuse their power, or they abuse it with impunity.</p> <p>—Emily DePrang</p> | ||||||
62 | 4/1/2012 0:00:00 | 4/1/2012 0:00:00 | ‘We Have No Choice’: One Woman’s Ordeal with Texas’ New Sonogram Law | <p>I sat on a hard chair in the spartan reception area and observed my fellow patients. I was the oldest woman in the waiting room, as well as the only one who was visibly pregnant. […]</p> <p>Eventually we were called back, not to a consulting room, but to another holding area. There, the staff asked my husband to wait while a counselor spoke to me in private. My husband sat down. Posters above him warned women about signs of domestic abuse. Meanwhile, I was enclosed with a cheerful-looking counselor who had colored hair and a piercing in her nose. Feeling like someone who’d stumbled into the wrong room, I told her between choked sobs how we’d arrived at her clinic on the highway.</p> <p>“I am so sorry,” the young woman said with compassion, and nudged the tissues closer. Then, after a moment’s pause, she told me reluctantly about the new Texas sonogram law that had just come into effect. I’d already heard about it. The law passed last spring but had been suppressed by legal injunction until two weeks earlier.</p> <p>My counselor said that the law required me to have another ultrasound that day, and that I was legally obligated to hear a doctor describe my baby. I’d then have to wait 24 hours before coming back for the procedure. She said that I could either see the sonogram or listen to the baby’s heartbeat, adding weakly that this choice was mine.</p> <p>“I don’t <i>want</i> to have to do this at all,” I told her.</p> <p>— Carolyn Jones</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20120401-politics-becomes-personal-texas-observer.jpg | |||||
63 | 7/31/2013 0:00:00 | 7/31/2013 0:00:00 | The Texas Legislature’s Sexist Little Secret | <p>What surprised me was how many women who work in the Capitol—legislators, staffers, lobbyists, other reporters—felt the same way. Everyone, it seemed, had a story or anecdote about being objectified or patronized.</p> <p>Even the most powerful women in the Legislature experience it. When I started interviewing women lawmakers, they all—Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, rural and urban—said that being a woman in the statehouse is more difficult than being a man. Some told of senators ogling women on the Senate floor or watching porn on iPads and on state-owned computers, of legislators hitting on female staffers or using them to help them meet women, and of hundreds of little comments in public and private that women had to brush off to go about their day. Some said they often felt marginalized and not listened to—that the sexism in the Legislature made their jobs harder and, at times, produced public policy hostile to women.</p> <p>Yet, despite their strong feelings, women in the Capitol rarely talk about, except in the most private discussions, the misogyny they see all the time. It’s just the way the Legislature has always been. […]</p> <p>Misogyny, as I had come to learn, is rampant in the Texas Capitol.</p> <p>Or, as Houston Republican Joan Huffman put it, “It’s probably the last of the good ol’ boys clubs.”</p> <p> —Olivia Messer</p> | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-201308-istock-sexist.jpg | photo by iStock | ||||
64 | 8/13/2011 0:00:00 | 8/13/2011 0:00:00 | Rick Perry announces his candidacy for president in South Carolina eight days after holding a prayer rally in Houston with a cast of far-right religious characters. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20110813-army-of-god-rick-perry-texas-observer.jpg | ||||||
65 | 1/19/2012 0:00:00 | 1/19/2012 0:00:00 | Rick Perry ends his presidential campaign not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a simple, plaintive “oops.” | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20110815-rick-perry-campaign-iowa.jpg | photo by LISA KRANTZ (Credit Image: © San Antonio Express-News/ZUMAPRESS.com) | Gov. Rick Perry campaigns for the presidency at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011. | ||||
66 | 6/25/2013 0:00:00 | 6/25/2013 0:00:00 | Wendy Davis, with a little help from some vocal pro-choice supporters, successfully filibusters an anti-abortion bill for 11 hours in the Texas Senate. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20130625-patrick-michels-wendy-davis-filibuster.jpg | photo by Patrick Michels | |||||
67 | 11/1/2013 0:00:00 | 11/1/2013 0:00:00 | House Bill 2, sweeping anti-abortion legislation, goes into effect, resulting in the closure of nearly half the state’s clinics. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/everythingisgone1.jpg | photo by Jen Reel | |||||
68 | 11/4/2014 0:00:00 | 11/4/2014 0:00:00 | Attorney General Greg Abbott is elected 48th governor of Texas, crushing Wendy Davis, and Battleground Texas, 59 percent to 39 percent. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-20141104-jen-reel-greg-abbott.jpg | photo by Jen Reel | |||||
69 | 2/23/2007 0:00:00 | 2/23/2007 0:00:00 | Candidate Barack Obama speaks at an Austin rally that draws an afternoon crowd of 20,000. | https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/201412-matthew-wright-obama-cowboy.jpg | photo by Matthew Wright |