Senfronia Thompson Tells Kinky To Get Off, And It Ain’t Houston
By Vince Leibowitz on Sep 13, 2006 in 2006 Texas Elections
Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston), Tuesday said she was “vehemently insulted” by remarks humorist Kinky Friedman made about Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in Houston:
“He has demonstrated a total lack of human sensitivity,” said state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston. “The people of Katrina have lost everything and are suffering not only from the loss of loved ones, but the trauma of the event itself. What has precipitated from this tragedy is behavior that results from a disastrous event.”
Of course, his campaign continues to try and spin things Kinky’s way—in vain:
Friedman campaign spokeswoman Laura Stromberg said Friedman is “one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met.”
“The fact of the matter is Houston has seen a tremendous surge in crime … we’re talking about homicide jumping 20 percent and many of those are being linked to Katrina evacuees,” Stromberg said. “Was he politically incorrect? Sure. But Kinky’s not afraid of the truth. He will be honest at the risk of losing some popularity.”
For someone who says he’s not a politician, his staff is behaving like he is: they’re talking about a set of data being “linked” to a group of people when the data isn’t that clear or convincing (a common mis-step of genuine politicans) and second, he’s already (through a spokeswoman) gone into the “well, I’ll tell the truth and you vote for who you want” routine, another politician’s trick.
For the former, I believe it was something like this:
Houston police have reported that 59 of the 262 Houston murders between Jan. 1 and Aug. 26 involved Katrina evacuees, either as victims or suspects.
First of all, 59 out of 262 is, what, less than one-fourth? Second, “victims or suspects,” that’s pretty broad. Are the victims of senseless violence at fault for Houston’s higher crime rate?
The latter is, by the way, absent only Pat Nixon sitting on a couch in a Respectable Republican Cloth Coat to make it any more of a typical political comment.
On another note, I believe this is the first instance I can recall of a member of the Lege actually coming out and criticizing Kinky Friedman for some of his idiotic comments. Kudos to Senfronia Thompson.
59/262 is 22.51-and-change percent. Yes, that’s less than a fourth. It’s also more than a fifth (by virtue of splitting the difference rather nicely). But that’s a quarter-of-a-twenty-percent change, so really only 5% increase from a population increase of how-many?
Kinky is a sound-bite generator, like Jesse Ventura was in Minnesota some few years ago. Texas won’t elect the “humorist,” but I think we need something other than “less than one-fourth” when we’re actually splitting hairs: if their ballpark wasn’t good enough, then neither was yours, Vince.
(and sweet-holy-jebus, we Dems will beat each other to death with details while the Repugnancers win, and then we’ll wonder WTF happened)
I heart Senfronia - she’s bossy!