A Jewish cowboy for Texas!

Americans are in the habit of electing all sorts of strange people as state-governors: an Austrian-American bodybuilder-actor in California, a Navy SEAL-professional wrestler-actor-radio talk show host in Minnesota or a baseball-team manager and president's son in Texas.

It looks like Texas may give us another flamboyant Governor - a country and western music singer who brandishes his trademark cigar, wears a black cowboy hat, spouts one-liners and writes mystery novels. Well, you may thin, a western music singer for Texas, what is more appropriate.

The fun part is that the guy - called Kinky Friedman - is one hell of a personality: the guy grew up in Texas as a Jew and called his band The Texas Jewboys in the early 1970s (one of his songs is "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore"). A Jewish cowboy for Texas!

Kinky Friedman is defintely not into polically correctness: "All I can say is, thank God for bars and dance halls".

... and so his positions on controversial issues cross philosophical lines:

• He supports prayers in schools as well as gay marriage: "They've got a right to be just as miserable as the rest of us.", he jokingly says.
• He is for legalized gambling — and calls it slots for tots,: "That'll pay for education.
• As for the management of the economy of the country's second-biggest state, he makes things quite simple: "Trust me, I'm a Jew, I'll hire good people.".

Obviously he does not take himself very seriously:"I'm 61 years old, which is too young for Medicare, and too old for women to care", he said.
However, what os certain is that he collected more than three times the number of signatures required by Texas law to make it onto the ballot as an independent, and he hired the political team that helped propel Jesse Ventura from the pro wrestling ring to the Minnesota governor's mansion.
In any case, it looks like the Texas campaign is going to be more fun this time.

NOTE: the other fun thing is his name 'Kinky'. His name is Richard Friedman but he is known as 'kinky' because his hair turned kinky (i.e. tightly twisted or curled) but in case you're not familiar with English slang, it is also an adjective for something of a sexual or erotic nature! The double-entendre fits his anti-political correctness of his campaign, doesn't it?