Ruminator magazine, April/May 2005

Ruminator magazine, April/May 2005

Kinky Friedman interview

Kinky Friedman interview (2005), magazine layout, p. 1

Kinky Friedman interview

Kinky Friedman interview (2005), magazine layout, pg. 2

Kinky Friedman interview pg 3

Kinky Friedman interview (2005), magazine layout, pg. 3

Kinky Friedman interview pg 4

Kinky Friedman interview (2005), magazine layout, pg. 4

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"KINKY FRIEDMAN: Author, Cowboy, Singer…Governor?"
Interview by Susannah McNeely (Schouweiler)

Richard Friedman was born near Palestine, Texas to an educated middle-class Jewish family. He’ll tell you that’s why he never made it as a country singer—he just didn’t have the same “opportunities” for a fruitful career in country music afforded to those with troubled, impoverished childhoods. In college a roommate dubbed him “Kinky” for his mess of curly hair and the moniker stuck. Inspired by Kennedy, Kinky Friedman joined the Peace Corps in the late-’60s and served in Borneo, where he’s claimed his primary accomplishment was to introduce the Frisbee to the natives, which they used to make their lips big.

When he returned to the States, he had a brief but celebrated career writing and performing irreverent country songs with his band (Kinky Friedman and His Texas Jewboys) like “They Ain’t Making Jews like Jesus Anymore” and “The Ballad of Charles
Whitman,” eventually even touring with Bob Dylan. Though the band developed a cult following, The Texas Jewboys’ star faded by the late-’70s, and in the mid-’80s Kinky began a successful second career as a mystery novelist; his well-loved, hilarious mysteries feature a band of misfits called the Village Irregulars led by a hardboiled, politically incorrect detective (with whom Kinky shares his name and quick tongue) who solves murders and tosses off one-liners with equal ease. He’s one of the few authors who can count both President Bush and President Clinton among his fans. His newest, and final, installment in the series, Ten Little New Yorkers, has just been released. He’s an enterprising philanthropist. Taking cues from Paul Newman, he’s tried his hand at life as a food impresario—offering proceeds from sales of Kinky Friedman Private
Stock salsa to the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch situated on his property and partnering with Farouk Shami to sell Holy Land olive oil, with all the profits going to fund summer camps for Palestinian and Israeli children to get together. At 60 years old, Friedman has stopped writing novels, and in early February he announced that he was making a bid for the office of Governor of Texas. His politics have grown more complicated—he’s not easily pinned to the Left or the Right, no longer the child who cried over Adlai Stevenson’s loss. Ruminator spent some time recently talking with Friedman about his run for governor, the role of outsider candidates like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, and about restoring the cowboy to a place of honor in Texas.

Susannah McNeely: I seem to remember a year or so ago in a television interview, you said that at 60 you wanted nothing more or less than to be the Salsa King of Texas. And after your bid for Justice of the Peace in ’86, you said you were leaving “that worthless tar baby that is politics” to the young people. What happened that changed your mind and prompted you to run for governor of Texas?

Kinky Friedman: Nothing changed my mind, that’s still correct. This is not a political campaign. It’s a spiritual one—a spiritual calling.

SM: What do you want to do?

KF: I want to change the face of politics here in Texas, and I don’t want to do it politically. Just like Arnold, I want to get rid of the career politicians. And once we do that, I’m going to get the Californians out of Texas.

SM: So you’ve got a big problem with Californians in Texas these days?

KF: It’s part of my “anti-wussification” campaign.

SM: What is it that you think has become wussy about Texas?

KF: I think all of America has become wussified, and Texas is the last stand against wussification.

SM: How so?

KF: Well, you’ve got people falling all over themselves to apologize for saying “Merry Christmas” for instance. That’s a good example. It’s political correctness gone awry. Smoking regulations are strangling the live music scene in Austin, the live music capital of the world. Another example is prayer in schools: people are afraid of even nondenominational prayer in schools, and I say, what’s wrong with a kid believing in something? And now it’s the cowboy, the word’s being used derogatorily; and I think that’s wrong.

SM: How do you think “cowboy” has been used pejoratively?

KF: By Europeans, by some Americans . . . maybe it’s because of George W., maybe not. It’s been used that way to mean a loose cannon or a bully. But a cowboy has never been that. A cowboy has always stood up for the little people. He’s always been a knight out of time, beloved by all the children of the world. I want to preserve the cowboy as he really is. I want to take us back to a time when the cowboys all sang and the horses were smart. I’m gonna beat this wussification, if I’ve got to do it one wuss at a time.

SM: As a spiritual leader of Texas, restoring the faith in the way things ought to be?

KF: That’s right, I’m looking to do spiritual lifting instead of heavy lifting. That’s what I’d do as governor.

SM: So does this idea of the honorable cowboy have anything to do with why you threw your support behind President Bush in this last election? You did, didn’t you?

KF: Yes. I did in this last election, but I didn’t vote for him the first time.

SM: Who did you vote for in 2000?

KF: I voted for Gore then. I was conflicted. . .but I was not for Bush that time. Since then, though, we’ve become friends. And that’s what’s changed things.

SM:] So it’s your friendship with him that’s changed your mind about having him as president more than his specific political positions?

KF: Well, actually, I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy. On domestic issues, I’m more in line with the Democrats. I basically think he played a poor hand well after September 11. What he’s been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think.

SM: As an independent candidate running for office, if you get elected how will you get things done? Jesse Ventura won the bid for governor here in Minnesota, but once in office, he had a hell of a time getting much through the legislature. Part of that may have been related to his own confrontational way of dealing with people, but part had to do with a lack of political capital and allies in the legislature. How are you going to overcome those sorts of difficulties to get things done?

KF: Well, you can’t get stuff done by going through the Texas legislature, anyway. We’re only safe when they’re out of session. I’ve said before, about Jesse, that he’s really inspiring because he believed that the guy with the most money shouldn’t always win—that elected office shouldn’t just go to the highest bidder. What Jesse didn’t realize is that wrestling is for real, and it’s politics that are fixed. And if it’s fixed, I want nothing to do with it. Imagine a governor with no strings attached, nobody owns him, totally untainted by politics. Imagine a state where musicians run the government instead of politicians, with a lot of young people involved. That might really work. Arnold’s beginning to do the same thing in California. The real issue is whether we can knock down this windmill of politics as usual. If we can, we’ll make the lone star shine again in Texas.

SM: But the comparison with Arnold doesn’t really hold up. He’s embraced within the Republican fold, even if he started as an upstart candidate. He’s got plenty of allies in the party he can rely on for help in getting his ideas implemented as policy. You don’t have that party support.

KF: Well, yeah, Arnold’s a Republican. But the thing that’s similar is that Arnold won when Californians decided to vote for an outsider, unencumbered by politics, rather than politics as usual. That’s the real issue. He didn’t take a stand on hardly any issues.

SM: Well, I suppose that’s true.

KF: But that’s fine, because the paramount issue is an idea whose time has come, that’s strong enough to defeat any army on earth. People were damned tired of Gray Davis and what he represented. Our governor is a lot like Gray Davis, but without the personality. He’s more interested in ironing his shirt than he is in ironing out the problems of Texas: his big issue is should he or should he not wear French cuffs.

SM: These general principles you’re offering may suffice for now, but you’ve got two years of campaigning ahead of you before the election. At some point, people are going to want to know some of the substance behind what you plan to do if elected.

KF: They already know. I’ll answer anything about any issue you want to talk about, if I know something about it. If I don’t, I’m not afraid to admit it and say, “read my lips: I don’t know.”

SM: Okay, then. Give me the most important elements of your platform.

KF: Let’s start with education. I want to make sure no teacher is left behind. I’ll establish a Texas Peace Corps, bringing retired people back into service for their community, people that have a lot of love and a lot of skill. I’d ask them to help out with art and music, the things that have been stripped out of public education. I don’t want Texas to be 49th in funding public education.

SM: If you want ambitious education reform, that’s going to cost a lot of money. I’ve read that you’d want to legalize casino gambling in Texas, using the tax proceeds from that to cover the cost of funding education. Is that your plan?

KF: Yes, I would legalize casino gambling in Texas to help generate money that might pay for education. But I also wouldn’t waste the money we already have. Even if there were billions of extra dollars, if you gave them to this current governor he wouldn’t help education, really. He’d put that money in all the wrong places: building stadiums, on computers, on more parking lots. When you think the problem with education is all about financial and technological shortfalls, you’re making a mistake, because the problem is human. The answer is to go out and find that great teacher, the one that changes lives; and when we find him or her, we place them in our under-resourced schools where they’re most needed. And then we need to listen to that person when we make policy; learn from him or her—bring them to Austin or bring Austin to them. In other words, money may buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.

SM: After you’ve successfully recruited good teachers and allocated them around the state to underserved areas, you may still find that you need money to pay them and keep the schools running. You’d have to work with the legislature, wouldn’t you, to get that money flowing toward these educational programs? How would you convince the politicians to work with you?

KF: The way you do that is the same way that Arnold’s doing it: you inspire the people, make it the centerpiece of your table when you talk to them; you shine a light in the darkness and let everybody know about what you need to do. Right now, our governor is more worried about lagging behind Kansas in technology access for our schools than he is about the fact that we’re lagging far behind nearly everyone in terms of child poverty and funding for education. That’s the much larger issue. Right now, the only states we beat on child poverty are Arkansas, New Mexico and West Virginia—these are some of the poorest states in the nation. I mean, Mississippi is ahead of us in all these areas. It’s ridiculous. If you’re lagging behind Mississippi, you’ve got a problem—especially a state like Texas. And I don’t want Texas to rank first in executions. Two thousand years ago we executed an innocent man, Jesus Christ—my question is, what have we learned in two thousand years? Actually, people may have learned quite a bit since then, but the government hasn’t learned a thing. Texas, right now, is very close to executing an innocent man.

SM: Max Soffar? You’ve written about his case, I think.

KF: That’s right. I’ll be speaking to Max tonight, and we’ll find out soon if he’s going to get a retrial. If he gets a new trial, you’re going to see that he’s been railroaded. I believe Max to be innocent, and an increasing number of law enforcement officials are coming to believe the same thing. Recently released notes from the first trial indicate that even the prosecutor has serious doubts about Max’s guilt, but if the system makes a mistake, it covers it up. That’s the problem, the system covers its mistakes to avoid embarrassment. Texas doesn’t even have the option of sentencing someone to life without parole: here it’s only inject or eject.

SM: Given your qualms about how the death penalty is being used, are there any circumstances under which you would be comfortable with it? As the system is in Texas now?

KF: Yes. I’m not anti-death penalty, but I’m damn sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed. It’s not going to happen on my watch.

SM: Practically speaking, how would you change the system so that you could have both?

KF: The first thing I’d do is establish a board of people who could knowledgeably oversee the way the death penalty is used. And I’d want to see, the way they’ve done in Illinois, if we have people currently on death row that don’t belong there.

SM: It still sounds like you’re trying to have it both ways. Would you impose a moratorium on the death penalty while you and your board figure out what reform is needed?

KF: I don’t know. I’ll have to see what we find out about those people currently facing execution; but, yes, probably.

SM: There is a rich tradition of support for the death penalty in Texas. Do you think you’ll have public support for this kind of measure?

KF: Yep, that’s true—a lot of people in Texas are very much in favor of the death penalty. But there may not be as many pro-death penalty people as you might think. Things aren’t always what they seem. In Texas, you’ve got a lot of people who hunt and who love guns; but you’ve got even more people that love animals. They just haven’t spoken up or realized that they can vote in enough numbers to make things happen.

SM: How do you feel about gun control? You wrote a column a while back in Texas Monthly about why you don’t hunt, didn’tyou?

KF: I’m not anti-hunting, I just don’t hunt. As far as gun control goes, in Texas the conceal-and-carry law is working really well; it’s cut crime and I think George W. did good with that one. I don’t think he did well with the death penalty—I’m not as confident as he is that innocent men haven’t been killed.

SM: When you imagine the voter you’re most likely to resonate with—who do you have in mind? What’s important to them?

KF: Well, I think one thing’s really resonating with those voters—they’re tired of the choice between plastic or paper in their elected officials. They’re really tired of politicians who don’t really get anything done that doesn’t serve their own interests. If the Democrats get a good idea, the Republicans shoot it down. If Republicans get a good idea, the Democrats kill it. All they care about are their parties. Me, I care about Texas.

SM: Are you in agreement with Ralph Nader then? Are you suggesting that there aren’t really any differences between the parties?

KF: Well, there’s a lot of insider scheming that we’re all tired of. Nader, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan—maybe none of them should have been President, but certainly, their ideas should be heard. And the parties are doing everything in their power to keep independents from being heard right here in the Lone Star State; the established political parties in Texas are making it almost impossible for anyone to do what Nader,
Buchanan and Perot have done. We haven’t had an independent candidate successfully run for governor since 1859. It’s a classic battle of money against ideas. The last time around, the winner in the Texas governor’s race spent over $100 million. $100 million worth of negative attack ads and media coverage to get a job that pays only $100,000. Now since I’m thinking in terms of this being a “spiritual campaign,” do you think Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King would do that? They all died broke, right? Would Jesus have paid $100 million to buy an election? I don’t think they would. Those guys were independent.

SM: But you’re a guy that shrewdly uses PR, too. You may not have to spend $100 million to do it, but I can’t help but notice that your announcement to run for governor just happens to coincide nicely with the release of your new mystery novel.

KF: Well, that’s pretty accidental. And besides, this is going to be my last novel for reasons that will be become apparent to anyone who reads it. I figure literature’s loss is politics’ gain. I’m glad to be done with the series, really.

SM: You’ve been doing this series nearly 20 years. I suppose that’s a long time to spend developing just one character with a pretty limited formula?

KF: Seventeen books total. It’s incredible, really. Now, if I were John Grisham or Tom Clancy, maybe I’d keep them going; it might be worth it. But I’m not in that mainstream category, and you know, I don’t have a lot of respect for the mainstream anyway. I think they’re going to be pretty irrelevant in the future; more people are going to be reading me than will be reading Clancy or Grisham, in the same way that more people read Bukowski now than read Harold Robbins.

SM: I have a question for you about Ten Little New Yorkers. I’ve noticed in the last few books, especially in this one, that there’s a lot of melancholy and self doubt plaguing your namesake character. And you’ve commented a couple of times recently that you’re “a serious guy that nobody takes seriously.” Are you beginning to feel trapped in this larger-than-life, wisecracking cowboy persona?

KF: Well, the problem with the mystery field is it’s as deep as it is narrow. There are parts of the formula you can’t get away from, that keep it limited and trite: the bodies in the library, the usual suspects, that kind of thing. The interesting part of it isn’t cheap, dog-eared death; the interesting part is life, and the detective wondering if there’s life before death. Maybe I’m going through some soul searching too. After all, I’m 60 years old—but I read at the 62-yearold level. I think about things a little differently now than I did before.

SM: Is this why you decided to run for governor now? You’ve joked about it in your Texas Monthly column for a couple of years, but it’s quite another matter to commit to seriously running for office. Was there one specific thing that prompted you to do it?

KF: I think there was. . . I was stranded, clutching on the side of a cliff for almost 48 hours in Cabo San Lucas five or six years ago. I was on vacation, and I got hit by a freak wave as I was walking on the beach one night that threw me up against the cliff. I thought I was going to die. And I was stranded on this cliff and it was pitch black; I was dehydrated, and I thought no one would find me. This was a private beach, with really expensive luxury homes—Sly Stallone lives there, people like that—and no one would ever think something bad could happen there. That same night a 16-year-old boy was caught in a similar riptide, along the same stretch of beach, and died. I was eventually rescued. While I was on the cliffside, I kept thinking that there’s got to be more to life than being a Ronald Reagan pitchman, you know? And I thought, if I live through this, I’m going to do something that might have more meaning, that might help people achieve their own dreams, like I’ve been able to achieve mine.

SM: But why now? Did something in particular get under your skin, make you angry?

KF: You know, I’m not really even running against the
current governor. I’m running against the whole damn
system—it’s corrupt, it’s inefficient and it’s soulless.
We’ve let these people run the show for a long time
now, and the results have been dreadful. Now let’s see
if somebody else can do it better. I mean, arguably, Texas should be the most influential state, a leader; New York, California and Texas. I think the cowboy is the greatest export the U.S. and
Texas have sent to other countries. I mean, if you go
overseas the cowboy is what everyone knows and
responds to—little kids, old people. They love the
cowboy everywhere: in Iraq, Vietnam, South Africa.
And Texas is the place they want to visit when they
come to America; they’re not looking to go to New
Jersey.

SM: What is it about the cowboy that you think resonates
so much? And what does the cowboy signify
for you?

KF: It means to be able to ride, to shoot straight and
to tell the truth. It’s the opposite of being political—it’s
common sense. It’s about finding that beautiful place
above politics where things get done.

SM: Do you think that when people enter the voting
booth that a person’s character is more important than his/her policy stance?

KF: I think both are important. I’ve already told you a lot more about my policy stance than either Arnold or Jesse ever came forth with. This is a chance to vote for somebody, not against anyone. Like I’ve said, I’m not running against the governor; I’m voting to change the whole system. It’s a spiritual campaign against the status quo. It’s going to be really difficult to win as an independent candidate, but I want to be every man’s horse in this race and every woman’s horse in this race. I’m not running to place—I’m running to win. It doesn’t really mean anything if a Democrat or a Republican wins in Texas, but if an Independent wins—that’ll send a shiver up the spine of every career politician in the country. What a great thing to happen! Talk about sending a message. That would do it.

It’ll be up to the people of Texas. They’re the only ones I’m listening to anyway. My fellow Texans are my heart; they’ll hear the same things I’ve told you, and they’ll never have to wonder what I’m about. They know that they, Texans all over the world wherever they may be, are my only special interest group.

(Copyright Susannah Schouweiler. This article may not be reprinted or reproduced without written permission of the author.)

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