Kinky Friedman was a bit of a Texan anarchist grasping for the throne.
Photo: dpa
“It’s not a shame to come from Texas, it’s just a shame to go back there,” goes one of Kinky Friedman’s great lines. And that’s also a nice bit of self-irony, because the “Jewish cowboy”, country singer and crime writer ended up back in Texas after many years on the road because he had now met everyone he wanted to get to know in New York, and because he wanted to run as an independent candidate in the Texas gubernatorial election in November 2006.
Even if he only came fourth back then, he still managed to get almost 13 percent of the votes cast. Kinky Friedman didn’t have a chance, but he took advantage. Despite his international fame, Texans were not entirely comfortable with Kinky. They distrusted his purring assurance, which was reminiscent of the snake Kaa from the “Jungle Book”: “Choose me! You can trust me, I’m Jewish.” Other than that, however, the average Texas voter would have found nothing wrong with him, because Friedman had all the trappings of a cowboy: he wore a cowboy hat, a cowboy mustache, and cowboy boots, and the fact that he supported legalized gambling was okay. Less because Kinky wanted to invest the state proceeds into the ailing education system, but rather because Kinky no longer had to make a special trip to Las Vegas to indulge his passion for gambling.
He had no objection to gay marriage because gay people should have the same right to the misery of togetherness as straight people. That the old stoner Willie Nelson in Kinky’s shadow cabinet should first become head of the Texas Rangers and later environment minister – “energy czar”, as Kinky said – because he soaked his old tour bus with bio-diesel and because, ultimately, it was about setting a good example However, going ahead would probably have been uncomfortable for a native Texan. Because for them, a fuel-guzzling highway sled is still part of the way of life.
And finally, this shady guy made no secret of the fact that he had fans who were completely down in Germany, namely Laura and George W. Bush. »They support me, albeit underground. George W. is a good man encased in a Republican’s body. Laura is a friend. She wrote me a letter; it says that they both wear my shirt when they go to the White House gym. But the wrong way round so that no one sees my slogan: ‘Why the Hell not?'”
Perhaps one has to admit that even one of the greatest villains in modern history sometimes has a nice side, but that doesn’t mean that one has to revise one’s judgment about his politics, and if so, then only in this one case, when he promised the election campaign to support Kinky.
All of this did not make Kinky a viable and serious candidate for the conservatives, because he made fun of the conservative side even more than he made fun of the left. Kinky feels comfortable in his role as an outsider, “as a Jew in Texas, as a Texan in New York, as a reactionary in progressive circles and as a progressive in conservative circles” (“New Yorker”). Or as the journalist Larry Sloman, also known as “Ratso” from Kinky’s crime novels, put it: “Too smart for country, too country for the intelligentsia.”
Kinky was a bit of an anarchist grasping for the throne. When asked “Mr. Friedman, why should you be elected governor?” he replied: “I wonder that too. No idea. When I announced the application, I said: ‘I need a bigger wardrobe.’ Now I have to think of a better reason.” You certainly wouldn’t get an answer like that from a German politician.
And smoking, drinking, and cursing aren’t exactly qualities that the average electorate would value in someone running for governor of Texas, especially if the man supports legalizing marijuana and has no objection to abortion. And in fact, Kinky’s poll numbers dropped when he rode in a convertible at a parade in Dallas and illegally downed a can of beer in front of innocent children’s eyes. It was of no use to him to plead diminished responsibility on the grounds that he was thirsty.
Kinky was surprisingly unpretentious as a showman and entertainer who spent a long time on stage with his country band The Texas Jewboys. “The clothing question is killing me again,” he once complained, like a presidential wife who is faced with the problem of finding the right one for the day from 200 pairs of shoes every morning. »I have two outfits. My Waylon Jennings vest with the booger here that Waylon gave me, and my preacher jacket, and every morning it takes me half the goddamn day to decide what to wear.”
He often stood on stage and sang blasphemous songs like “Men’s Room, LA.” Kinky sits on the toilet, has no toilet paper, only a picture of the Lord, and says: “Lord, what would you do / If you were me and I were you / Take a chance, save your pants or your soul?” That was pretty tough stuff for believers of all kinds. And also his ironic song about how you don’t have to take drugs because after all you can get “High on Jesus”, not to mention “Proud to be an Asshole from El Paso”, These were the blasphemous hits with which the Texas Jewboys did not go down well with the more conservative country audience.
But Kinky dealt on all sides. The Jewboys were attacked by Indians in San Francisco because they dressed up as Indians and sang a funny little Indian song: “We are the red man tall and qaint,” that is, tall and picturesque, whimsical, strange, which the natives obviously did didn’t find it so funny. The Jewboys were chased off stage by feminists for the song “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed,” a song that earned Kinky the title of “male chauvinist pig.” In Denver it was black people and in Nacogdoches, Texas it was the rednecks who felt so provoked by the Jewboys that they didn’t want to watch the show to the end. But liberal Jews in New York were also not amused and called the Jewboys a “disgrace.”
At the Troubadour in LA, Rod Stewart came with a rigged escort full of LA glitz to see Kinky. After the third or fourth song he said: “What the bloody hell is this?” and left in a huff with his “high-dollar date”. But at New York’s Lone Star Club, where he performed weekly, Kinky was visited by Robin Williams and John Belushi. At the time, however, he was taking too many drugs, which is why Tom Waits advised him to stop. He retreated to an old trailer on his parents’ farm and wrote 17 crime novels starring himself. A therapy that worked and gained him many new fans such as Wiglaf Droste, Franz Dobler and Denis Scheck, who invited him to his show “Druckfrisch”.
Kinky Friedman has been quiet in recent years. It was now learned that he suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He died on June 26th in Texas at the age of 79. With him died the idea of freedom that Kinky lived out in his unstable life, a life that is no longer possible today.