Surprisingly, Texas Ain’t Gawker’s “Worst State”

Been watching Gawker’s mini-series The Worst 50 States in America solely to see where The Great State of Texas landed up — figured surely it would rate Top 10, if only because of a certain presidential candidate who’s now the GOP’s front-runner. But, no. Texas comes in today at No. 13, sandwiched between Arkansas and Florida. So, let’s see … what’s good about our state? Well … the food, the music and Dazed and Confused. All right, all right, all right. And the bad?

Welp, let’s see here: Rick Perry, George W. Bush, the board of education, Cameron Todd Willingham, the culture of capital punishment as a whole, guns, religious zealotry both inane and dangerous, smog-filled Houston, airless Dallas, scorched wasteland El Paso, and the way they treat their immigrants, their blacks, their gays, and their women. But mostly Texas is awful because despite all the miseries it inflicts upon the rest of the country (and its own citizenry), Texans rarely stop loudly and aggressively stating what a great, awesome, perfect place Texas is. The Texan ego is as big as the state, and no matter how much you point out to them that, uh, hey what about all this extremely terrible stuff, they will not listen. If you guys would just shut up about if for a while, the rest of us might like you a little more.