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March
/ april 2006:
Being Kinky
The world's most famous
Jewish cowboy has a lot on his plate. Kinky Friedman
is an accomplished novelist, satirist, and musician.
Now he has his sights set on a new job: Being governor
of the great state of Texas. Our very own Mason Lerner
spent the afternoon with the craziest man not yet on
the ballot.
Story by Mason Lerner | Photo by Michael O'Brien
If you can say one thing about Kinky Friedman, it’s that he doesn’t have a shortage of career aspirations. He’s the former frontman for a folk band called “The Texas Jewboys.” He’s authored 17 novels and is an all-around gregarious gadfly. He’s king of his own empire — a music label (kinkajourecords.com), an olive oil company (faroukfriedman.com), and even his own line of salsa sauce (kinkysprivatestock.com). And, oh yeah, the dude thinks he can be the next governor of Texas.
I’m walking to my truck after spending several hours with him at his ranch in Medina, Texas, and Kinky is walking with me.
“Well, thanks for coming out, Mason,” the old goat tells the kid.
“Free media is the only way we can win this thing,” he says.
That’s why I’m here. There is no doubt Kinky provides the type of entertainment that attracts TV cameras and scribbling reporters in droves, but does he really have a shot at being Texas’ governor as an independent candidate? As much as an “enlightened redneck” as he claims to be, he’s still a Jew living deep in the heart of Bush country.
I thank Kinky and shake his hand. He slips me his business card. It reads: “Kinky Friedman is allowed to walk the grounds unattended. If found elsewhere contact 965 Echo Hill Road.”
That’s Kinky. He’s always got one more joke up his sleeve. But can a Red State electorate possibly take the blue blooded satirist seriously?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s Sunday, the day before my sit-down with Kinky. I’m resting on a bench outside of Whole Foods in Austin eating a grilled chicken sandwich. I’m headed to Medina from Houston, and Austin is a nice little halfway-there pit stop. My phone rings.
“Mason?” I hear. It’s a gruff but sweet voice.
“This is Kinky,” the voice says.
“Yeah, what’s going on, boss?” I say.
“Is there any way we can do the interview on Wednesday?”
“No, boss,” I say. “I am up from Houston. Monday is my day to do it.”
“Alright, then we do it then. Call me if you get lost.”
I’ve chatted with Kinky one other time before. Just after he announced his candidacy, I pitched a story about the Kinkster to a Jewish magazine in New York. They bit, leaving me to figure out how the hell I was actually going to get in touch with him.
I had seen Kinky featured on CNN and CNBC around that time, and I figured he was a busy man. If not politicking, then at least promoting his latest novel, Ten Little New Yorkers, which conveniently hit the shelves right about the time he announced his run for office.
I figured it would be hard for a random journalist looking for a story to get some face-time. I was half right.
I logged on to kinkyfriedman.com, which has come a long way in the days since. At the time, I was barely able to find contact info for Kinky’s PR people. I just called all the numbers I could find on the site until one hit.
By comparison, these days the site has a link to every bit of media attention the “spiritual cowboy” has garnered, a blog to keep readers posted on Kinky’s daily activities, and myriad ways to make campaign donations. If you just can’t get enough of Kinky’s zingers, you can also buy a talking Kinky Friedman action figure. Seriously.
Actually, the doll is more like a traditional politician than Kinky. All you have to do is stick it in front of a microphone, pull a string, and it will say one of a few go-to lines. After our meeting, I decide that might be what separates Kinky from other pols. Although he digs the one-liners, he has no strings attached.
I finally got in touch with Kinky’s people. His PR person told me there was no way Kinky could talk to me for at least two weeks. I was told that he was handling too many things that were vital for his career.
“You tell Kinky that I am a young Jewish writer trying to make it, and it’s important for my career,” I said. Back in Poland, we called that chutzpah. In Texas, it’s known as moxie.
Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. I answered. It was Kinky.
That was then. This is now.
I’ve been invited to spend the afternoon with him on his ranch and I’m totally lost. Naturally, it’s raining too. There will be no calling Kinky. Apparently cell phones don’t work that well deep in the hill country. And that’s where I am. Deep in the hill country.
You don’t get much more Texas than the drive from Austin to Medina. I was splashed by an unfathomable amount of oversized pickups with too many fog lights and huge mud flaps on the freeways, and I stopped for a deer crossing in the hills. Not a sign. I mean, an actual deer crossed the road and I stopped.
After overshooting the ranch by a few miles, an elderly woman saved me with accurate directions. This time I didn’t miss the sign pointing the way to Echo Hill.
I follow more signs that lead me over rocky roads and dirt trails. Tree branches smash against my windshield until finally I go over a mud bridge with just enough space for my ride to safely cross a shallow creek.
Just past the water, I see a wood fence. It seems like the right place to tie a horse up, so I park next to it. As soon as I get out of my truck, three dogs are nipping at my heels.
“Take me to your leader,” I say.
And they pretty much do. The three dogs lose interest in me and turn back toward a cottage about 100 yards away. I jog after them, slide under a locked gate and make my way to the house. The front door is open. I slowly push in the screen.
“Kinky?”
“Is that you, Mason?” he asks.
Kinky, 61, emerges into the cottage’s living room wearing a denim shirt and blue jeans. He doesn’t have his ubiquitous Stetson on, but he does have his trademark cigar in hand.
He tells me he’ll be right with me. He’s just waiting for a phone call for a radio interview in Colorado. In the meantime, he tells me to grab some food and look around. Well, he said to grab some food. I choose to look around.
“Grab some fried chicken,” Kinky calls from his study. “But don’t eat it all. The dogs like it too.” Kinky refers to his dogs as the “Friedmans,” and he plans to one day give them the same free reign in the governor’s mansion as they have here at the ranch. I notice their food bowls are filled with what looks like cooked beef covered in a surprisingly appetizing sauce.
One wall in his kitchen is plastered with photographs and news clippings from the old days. There are posters advertising both his band and his novels. There are aged and withered write-ups from publications like Rolling Stone, Variety, and the Chicago Sun-Times. There is even an excerpt from a February 1973 issue of Newsweek declaring, Kinky was “on his way to becoming the first Texas-Jewish Country-Western Music Star.”
I’m still doing the math on the odds of there being a second “Texas-Jewish Country-Western Music Star” when I peek into Kinky’s bedroom.
What I see makes me sort of sad. The bed is not made, which isn’t what made me sad. What makes me sad is the suitcase. It just looks so lonely.
It’s open and half-full. It looks recently rummaged through. It’s hard to imagine Rick Perry, the current governor of Texas, wearing anything but a perfectly pressed dress shirt. I can imagine Kinky on the way to a fundraiser hurriedly trying to ferret out a pair of matching socks.
He’s single, although not for a lack of trying. He can often be seen greeting women at fundraisers with the line, “You’ve got first lady written all over you.”
But, alas, for now he remains a bachelor, a lone star in search of a state.
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Kinky was born Richard Friedman in Chicago, but was raised in Houston and Austin. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1966. Although he’s from the city, he spent much of his youth on the ranch. His parents opened it in 1953 to serve as a “non-competitive” summer camp for Texas youths.
Friedman tried to capture a spoonful of the sun and became a country music superstar in the 1970s. He fronted for a short-lived sensation called “The Texas Jewboys” whose most famous song was “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” The group opened for Bob Dylan and received national attention, but their success didn’t last long. They eventually ended up going separate ways in drugged out hazes.
“I’ve pretty well forgotten the first half of my life, so I forgot how it got started,” he says. “Except the band only lasted four or five years, but it was pretty celebrated when it was around. It never made a lot of money. It managed to irritate a lot of people, which is always a good thing. Maybe that’s where the truth telling really started.”
Around the time that the Jewboys disbanded, Kinky’s one true love kissed her Ferrari’s windshield at 95 miles per hour in Toronto. That was the last kiss she ever gave anyone.
“Every writer needs a dead sweetheart, I guess,” he laments.
Kinky had officially hit a rough spot, but he rebounded and became something of a phenomenon in, of all places, New York City. He had a regular gig at the Lone Star Café in Manhattan. The legend is that he made pretty good loot, but he snorted, inhaled, or otherwise ingested whatever he earned.
In short, he partied like a young President Bush. But Bush was a Bush. The Friedmans were not powerful and Kinky’s future was not guaranteed. But they did have one thing in common with the Bushes. They had a ranch. In Texas.
And in 1985, that’s exactly where he showed up — at his parents’ ranch in Medina, in self-destruct mode and without a clue where his life was headed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Twenty years later, Kinky Friedman is at a crossroads. When his music career faltered, he reinvented himself as a writer. And a prolific one at that. He has written 17 novels and ten other books with such ribald titles as ‘Scuse Me While I Whip This Out and Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned. But one day Kinky realized he wanted more.
After three decades as an omnipresent voice in Texas as a musician, novelist and humorist, Kinky decided he wanted to be governor. In characteristically dramatic fashion, Friedman announced his candidacy in front of the Alamo on his buddy Don Imus’ radio show. Nobody, including Kinky, took it very seriously.
As if to make matters even more surreal, he hired his hairdresser, a Palestinian named Farouk Shami, to be his campaign advisor and promised to make him Texas’ first ambassador to Israel.
Soon afterwards, he started distributing bumper stickers with slogans like “Kinky 2006: Why the hell not?” and “Kinky for Governor: How hard can it be?” When Imus asked why Kinky was announcing his candidacy, Kinky replied that he needed more closet space.
At the time, how could anybody take it as anything but a joke? And, for a while, they did. But eventually the joke, as it often does, wears thin and Kinky was still on the trail. Perhaps his tell-it-like-it-is philosophy was something salt-of-the-earth Texans could actually get behind.
Since that day at the Alamo, Kinky’s campaign has picked up traction and gained national attention. He’s been interviewed on 60 Minutes, profiled in The New Yorker, and was even convinced by Country Music Television to let a camera crew follow him on the campaign trail for a reality show titled Go Kinky.
Now, to be eligible for the November vote, he’ll need to actually get his name on the ballot. Beginning March 8th, the day after the primary, Kinky’s campaign has 64 days to gather signatures from 45,000 Texans who didn’t vote in either the Republican or Democratic state primary.
And those people will wonder, as many often have, whether Kinky Friedman’s public persona is the real Kinky. Is he the eternal jokester or is he dead serious about this one?
That is how Kinky Friedman finds himself at the crossroads of his life that will determine if he treads the paths of Texas legends like Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, or if he is just another rodeo clown in a barrel floating down the Pecos.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The other candidates are ignoring Kinky, but there are signs that they know he could be a factor. Suddenly it seems Governor Perry is making more public appearances.
After taking the helm when George W. Bush left for the White House in 2000, Perry basically ran unopposed in 2002. This time, he seems to have figured out that he’ll have to get his hands dirty if he wants to hold onto his roomy office in the capital. He’s hitting the campaign trail hard. There he is shaking soldiers’ hands in Iraq. There he is again at the official celebration of the University of Texas’ national football title, although he’s a graduate of Texas A&M, their biggest rival.
Meanwhile, Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn (the mother of White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan), is running for governor as an Independent, but she is running on a hard core Republican platform. Strayhorn, running on the slogan “one tough grandma,” is efficiently utilizing local media to attack Perry’s policies and flaws as a Republican. She never mentions Kinky.
Rick Perry kicks it with lobbyists in Washington, she says. He is the establishment. When you’re sticking it to the man, you’re sticking it to him. She could force a split in Republican voting — and that would only help Kinky.
And than there’s Friedman, going through his song and dance on Leno. While Perry trades influence, Kinky keeps it to one-liners.
I hang out in the cottage’s living room while Kinky wraps up his radio spot. The furniture in the room consists of a couch and some chairs upholstered in either faded leather or the cowboy patterns you normally see on a young boy’s bed sheets. I’m guessing they use a different decorator in Crawford.
From the living room, I listen in on Kinky’s radio interview.
“I’ve never been a politician. I’m a musician. There’s a big difference,” Kinky tells the deejays. “I’ve always felt that musicians could better run this state than politicians. We won’t get a lot done in the mornings maybe, but we’ll work late and we’ll be honest. I think that is what everybody in Texas wants.” To that end, Kinky has actually said that, if elected, he will appoint fellow musician Willie Nelson energy czar.
“I want to de-wussify Texas if I have to do it one wuss at a time,” he says.
I’ve heard Kinky use these lines in just about every interview I’ve seen him do. I can hear the radio jocks’ laughter from my seat. It emanates from the souls of two men who’ve heard it all before, but they’re desperate to make their audience laugh, so they pretend it’s the first time.
I begin to realize that the so-called anti-politician is really just a natural politician. What is politics if not repeating a few catch phrases over and over to provide a compelling sound bite? Maybe he really does have a chance.
Kinky knows that chance depends on whether he can get all the people who say they would vote for him to actually cast ballots. He hopes his campaign wakes up apathetic young voters. “Without them, we are dead,” he says.
To that end, Kinky is planning to embark on a bus tour across Texas with Nelson. They’ll hit as many campuses as possible statewide in an effort to get support from young voters.
On the surface, that seems like a great idea. A young at heart free spirit and a genuine Texas hero stumping around the state should definitely get the students’ attention. That is, if the students have heard of them. If not, they’ll just be two old guys on a bus.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kinky calls me into his study. The walls are decorated with pictures of Jesus and Ghandi. Books and papers are splayed about his desk and shelves. There’s a plaque from the Jewish Defense League hanging over his desk with his name engraved on it.
“What did you get that for?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Kinky replies. “You’d have to ask them.”
Kinky sits down at his desk, and before I can get the next question out, he’s looking over his schedule for the following week.
“Awww ... I gotta do this the whole f--king day,” he says. “Well, I can’t do this one o’clock thing. I gotta fix that. This f--ks up my whole goddamn day.”
He gets his PR person on the phone and reschedules everything that he can for Wednesday. That is one thing about Kinky. If you don’t stick to your guns, he will reschedule you for Wednesday.
Kinky says that in spite of the hectic schedule and his mini tantrum, he’s thoroughly enjoying the campaign. “I’m glad it’s hectic,” he says. “I’m liking it. I’m getting in touch with the people in a way that I haven’t before.”
Kinky’s campaign took a turn toward serious after a Zogby Poll released last November showed he actually had the support of 21% of those who voted in the last election. Governor Perry had 41%. Strayhorn was not yet a candidate at the time of the poll.
Kinky then hired the political team that guided wrestler-turned-governor Jesse Ventura to a victory in Minnesota. More importantly, Kinky has already raised nearly two million dollars — that’s three times as much money raised as the two top Democratic contenders combined. He tells me his goal is to raise five million.
If this thing is a joke, it’s the most expensive set of laughs since Seinfeld played Vegas. The poll was an incredible confidence builder for Kinky, especially because Zogby doesn’t tally the opinions of those who didn’t vote in the last election.
“If we can get those people to vote, we win,” he says. “We’re at 21% right now. If we get up to 25-27%, it will be a landslide.”
Only about a third of registered voters cast a ballot in the last election. Kinky knows that if he can parlay that political apathy, he’s got a real shot at winning. “Most of the voters are just like me,” he says, “We didn’t vote last time. We’re just through with it. We haven’t voted in years. But if they come back, Perry is gone.”
That’s all assuming he can successfully get those 45,000 signatures he needs to get his name on the ballot. Kinky says the signature challenge is just another example of politicians narrowing the field of competition. “We have everything but a poll tax here,” he says. “They make it very hard to get on the ballot as an Independent. That’s why no one has ever done it. Strayhorn has lots of money, so she’ll buy it. But we’re not going to do that.”
He also says he expects to have to deal with a few dirty political tricks, such as Republicans who voted in the primary signing the petition to prematurely inflate the numbers, knowing their names will be disqualified when they are counted officially. “The last thing the governor wants is a big turnout,” Kinky says.
Kinky throws in that if he makes a strong showing but loses the election, there will be no moral victories. “I will retire in a petulant snit,” he admits. “I will retire to a goat farm and never be heard from again.”
That wouldn’t be a good idea for Kinky’s friends — George W. Bush and Bill Clinton among them. Legend has it that the current president calls Kinky for advice from time to time and Clinton is a fan of Kinky’s novels. In fact, Clinton gave Kinky the advice that seems to be the driving political philosophy of Kinky’s campaign. “He told me to pick two issues and stick with them,” Kinky says. And he did.
The two biggest problems facing Texas, according to Kinky, are education and the border. And he thinks he has the solution for both. “It’s a matter of where Texas wants to go,” he says, “Are we satisfied being 50th in education and first in executions?”
He adds that teachers have approached him with tears in their eyes and asked him to fix a broken system. Kinky says he would “clean house” as soon he became governor. He would fill all school board and education positions only with people that have classroom teaching experience.
He notes that it seems a bit strange that while schools all around the state are in financial crises, Perry seems to want to avoid the issue by incessantly trying to figure out a way to work “intelligent design” into the curriculum. “How can anybody look at the Texas State Legislature and believe in intelligent design?” he asks.
“Perry will give you figures about how much money we have spent on education,” he continues. “Well, you don’t throw money at a problem and solve it. You have to understand the human component. He doesn’t understand teaching and he doesn’t care about it.”
Kinky says it’s time to get creative about school funding in Texas. He says he would legalize casino gambling to raise cash for class. He also isn’t above stealing ideas from other states if he thinks they will help education in Texas.
“They’re doing something in Georgia that I think is pretty interesting,” he says. “They’re separating the sports budget from the education budget by letting the corporate sector bid on high school stadiums in Georgia. So you could have a ‘Bank of America Stadium’ or a ‘Nike Stadium’ at the high school level.”
Another thing Kinky says separates him from Republicans and Democrats, whom he refers to as “the crips and the bloods,” is he can use logic, not political dogma, to dictate policy. He says he’s probably the only guy to ever run for office that is both pro-abortion and supports prayer in school.
“I don’t care who they pray to,” Kinky explains. “They can pray to a tree. Just as long as they know it’s OK to believe in something.”
By refusing to be pigeonholed, Kinky allows himself to be both conservative and liberal at the same time. That comes in handy when dealing with the touchy issue of the Texas/Mexico border. “Perry’s policy for six years has been bring us your tired, your poor, your drugs, your bombs, your gangs, your terrorists and welcome to Texas,” Kinky muses. “That’s his policy, and it ain’t gonna fly. That’s why you find dead bodies in the back of cargo container trucks.”
He says he thinks Perry is afraid to discuss the border issue because he doesn’t want to offend Hispanic voters. Kinky doesn’t seem too worried about that. He has a pretty unique idea to prod the Mexican government into taking more initiative on stopping illegal immigration.
“What I would do is assign territories to Mexican generals and give them each a bank account with five million dollars in it,” Kinky explains. “And every time somebody gets caught crossing the border illegally, we will make a withdrawal from those savings accounts.”
Kinky also says that if he wins, he will spend an hour a day waiting by the phone to talk with average Joes like himself. “I would be the first governor with a listed phone number,” he says. “During certain hours of everyday, people could give me a call. They could call and say, ‘F--k you’.”
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Kinky is not only the sole Jewish cowboy you’ll ever meet. He’s probably the only Jew you’ll ever meet that will tell you he has Jesus in his heart. “What I say is that I’m a Judeo-Christian,” he admits. “I have Jesus and Moses in my heart. They were both good Jewish boys who got in trouble with the government.”
Kinky points out that he has something else in common with these two icons. And he throws in a few other big-named historical movers and shakers for good measure. “I will be the only man to ever enter the governor’s mansion broke and leave broke,” he says. “Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Jesus. Moses,” he adds. “None of them had a great deal of material wealth when they died. It’s interesting that these people will live forever.” He clearly thinks this campaign is his shot at immortality.
He says Jesse Ventura told him he didn’t meet with any lobbyists the whole time he was in office. Kinky plans to do the same. “The real corruption point is that Texas has been sold out,” he says. “Sold out to the lobbyists, the special interest groups, the politicians, the political parties ... and we’re on eBay. Texas is on eBay right now, and I want to take her off eBay and give her back to the people.”
He thinks if he wins, the reverberations will be felt worldwide. “What it could mean for America,” he says, “What it could mean for all of civilization is very important. Bluebonnets will spring up across America and politicians will get shivers up their spine.”
It’s hard to believe a guy can compare himself to Moses, claim to be the key to saving civilization, and still seem to be humble. But Kinky, somehow, pulls it off.
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A few days later, I’m sprawled on my couch chowing on some Chunky Monkey ice cream. Kinky is being featured on 60 Minutes, a big coup for a guy that needs all the free press he can get. He’s telling the world that, damn right, he’s serious about being the next governor of Texas and spewing his go-to one-liners.
“You can criticize me all you want, just don’t circumcise me anymore,” he yells.
As I watch Kinky going through the motions, I wonder if relying on free TV could really be enough to hit Perry and Strayhorn below the Bible Belt. Only time — and several thousand signatures — can answer that.
But Kinky did answer one thing at the ranch. He is serious. He believes in his mission, and he seems to genuinely care about Texans. No matter what his initial motives were, this is not just a publicity stunt.
I also reflect on the moment Kinky got my own endorsement. It wasn’t when I realized Texas might have a Jewish governor. It wasn’t when I saw the passion for Texas the man carries in his very essence. The truth is, he had me at fried chicken.
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