"For God so loved the world that he wiped out the livelihoods of thousands of Cajun and Vietnamese fishermen in Bayou la Batre, Alabama, because a city 140 miles away was sinning. He works in mysterious ways. But He’s really a wonderful guy, I mean… He just hits us because He’s really busy from being a greaty guy and we get on His nerves… you just haven’t seen Him at his best, really…"
From The Gospel According to Hank Erwin (R-Montevallo)
I always get so pissed off when I read about Louisiana’s “colorful” politicians- the Long Brothers and the like, when Alabama elects people at least as fucked up to represent the state and its districts.
Like this guy, our friend who couldn’t make a living as a law degree so he became a professional kickboxer, and yet then managed to become Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court and a national figure with just a few tons of marble and some cameras…
or
This one… Mr. Bury them Queer Books in a Deep Deep Hole himself (who— get this- college administrators would not denounce because “he’s a friend of education”)
or
the former governor who dance like monkeys to protest evolution and whose wife took the state jet to Fundie revivals and protected her beach mansion by hiring men to erect crosses during a hurricane, *
or the former governor who was an Am-Way salesman who was impeached for (among other things) using secret servicemen to work on his farm and accepting love offerings as his main source of income,
or this “seg’ergation forever” charmer (chronic womanizer when he could move his legs and whose sexpot second wife with a fondness for security guards that even made it into an Angelina Jolie performance and whose mother-in-law called him a “titty high son of a bitch” in national news and was herself the sister of yet another governor, Big Jim Folsom, who appeared on TV so drunk he couldn’t remember his kids names when he tried to introduce them and imitated a cuckoo clock for several minutes, who was defeated by this man, elected largely because he was the subject of a Hollywood movie about his clean-up of “the wickedest city in America” after his father’s murder (the movie neglected to mention that he was one of the most rabid racial separatists in southern history who actually turned the racially liberal Wallace to a monster {“John Patterson ain’t gone outnigger me again, I’ll tell you that”- Wallace, 1958).
And it goes on and on and on. People think Truman Capote and Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor and other Southern Gothic writers had such wonderful imaginations when in fact they were all just very gifted reporters. Nothing has to be fictionalized down here.
Anyway, this pitting is for a little representative from Alabama who’s just now making his bones and is sure to hit the big-time now that his dumbassery has made national news. Little Hank Erwin of Montevallo, this one is for you:
(There’s fuller coverage in other sites but they require registration.)
Yeah, it takes God a while, and He’s kind of old and sluggish and ornery these days so he wipes out a whole bunch of poor homeless people and a rich ultra conservative senator’s house on the way, but He’ll get to it. He can put up with sin for only a few centuries before He’s gonna wipe out that Section 8 Housing to make a point. We don’t know what it is, but He made the universe, so we’re betting it’s profound. It’s just like when he wiped out that other cesspool of human sin, Bangkok, earlier this year (well, okay, he wiped out the part of Thailand that was nowhere near the fleshpots of Bangkok, but it’s clear what He was trying to say).
Fuckers. Are people like Erwin really and truly that hatefully and criminally stupid, or do they just pray that 50% or more of their constituents are? (And of course, if it’s the latter, they’re probably right.)
Folks who’ve never been to Alabama- I promise you- there are intelligent, well read, rational, wonderful, funny and brilliant people down here. They just don’t happen to be the ones we elect.
*Something you won’t read in the press- this particular governor also has a flamingly gay brother who dons drag and does a killer impression of his sister-in-law, the former first lady. A cliche because it’s true- you can’t make this shit up.
