[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
I didn’t start this thread to bash Texas and/or Texans, but I have a feeling it will get heated. What I wanted to do is make a suggestion or two (or three… or four…) as to why we poke fun at Texas, based on stereotypes. 
[ul][li]Texans are stereotypically loud and obnoxious. I know they all aren’t. I’m talking about stereotypes. While only a small percentage of Texans probably wear ten-gallon hats, they are often depicted in film and on televsion and in other media as wearing them with ‘cowboy-style’ suits. They talk loud and flash their money. That’s a stereotype, but here’s something I can think of that actually happened: There’s a photo of Lynden B. Johnson showing off a scar on his torso. This indicates a lack of decorum to me. (And I’ve heard he’d conduct parts of meetings from the toilet.)[/li][li]They seem full of themselves – even though Texas is only the second-biggest state, and if Alaska were divided into two equal-sized states Texas would be the third-largest. 
And yet, ‘Everything is begger in Texas’ is a well-known aphorism. Talking big makes them a target to be knocked down a couple of pegs.[/li][li]The Death Penalty.[/li][li]Conservatives.[/li][li]Duhbya.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
I appreciate your explanation. It still doesn’t address the issue that stereotypes exist from ignorance.
Only shitkickers and folks who don’t know better wear cowboy hats, and yet everyone expects Texans to wear cowboy hats. There are damn few of us who own oil wells any more. There are even less of us who own cattle. And yet everyone thinks we’ve got a walking beam unit running full bore in the back yard, with at least 40 head of cattle grazing around it. It’s tiresome. A lot of that can be laid at Hollywood’s doorstep because they are too lazy and/or dumb to actually do some original thinking and throw out stereotypes, but the rest of it…well, a little original thinking on everybody’s part would go a long way.
Yes, we are conservative as a whole. We do have liberal patches, like the People’s Republic of Austin, but all in all, we are conservative. And that is good, not bad. Unfortunately, we also have our fair share of religious whackos that have infested our conservative politics. They’re like crab lice; they don’t contribute anything, they’re irritating as hell and they’re damn near impossible to get rid of, but they are the ones that everyone zeros in on, as if they speak for everyone else.
And yes, George W. Bush was our governor, and now he’s President. He was a good Governor and he’s a good President. Well, he was good when he started. He’s slipped a little in my book because of his failure to address the border issues and illegal immigration; I’d say he’s down to a C or C minus these days. He’s still a better President than his predecessor and he’s a damn sight better on his bad days than Lyndon Johnson ever was on his good days. If you want to talk about a President from Texas being a disgrace, LBJ is your man.
And yes, we have capital punishment in our state. And yes, juries convict people and sentence them to die. And we put them to death. Are mistakes made? Possibly, but given the legal system that we have, by the time somebody gets the needle, their case has gone through probably 4 levels of the court system: the original trial in the state district court, the appeal to the state Court of Criminal Appeal, an appeal into the Federal courts, an appeal into the Federal Appelate system and possibly all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the conviction was upheld at each step of the process. Until we come up with a better legal system, that’s the way it is. Why, in the name of OG, does that jack everybody’s jaws so badly? We’re absolutely no different from any other state in the Union in that aspect.
However, Texas really is the biggest state. If you melt the ice off Alaska, you’ll wind up with something the size of Vermont.