I was born in Texas, and I seem to remember a lot of people who were NOT, in fact, retarded. But reading the non-Texan-biased media leaves me feeling more and more like the non-retards are fewer and farther between. Please, Texans, help me reclaim my youthful, dewey-eyed (well, OK, dust-storm-encrusted-eyed) love for the Bluebonnet State. (Quick, before the lonestar retards come in and take over with cries of “Southern Heritage” and all that bullshit.)
I’ll vouch for my mom. Granted, she hasn’t lived there since before the end of WWII.
I’d be more worried about the masses who are going to flame you for using the word “retard”.
As a recovering Texan, I feel your pain. Maybe its something in the water, or something not in the water, or the lack of water in the first place. But it’s whack, Jack, and there’s just no getting around it.
On the other hand, the prevalence of whackitude enforces a certain hard-edged sanity that cannot be broken, corroded or corrupted. Molly Ivins is the most relentlessly sensible lefty in print, she seems to regard the exclamation point as the nuclear bomb. I could listen to Anne Richards examine the political scene all day, and not just because she doesn’t have a funny accent.
On the other hand, who else would send a creepezoid like Tom DeLay (R-Undead) to Congress more than once? Once, OK, you were drunk, you didn’t know what you were doing. But twice?
And I would give just about anything to pull up to a ramshackle joint, step in through a more-or-less intact screen door (Mrs. Bairds is goooood bread! and order me a wet, sloppy hunk of bar-b-que on white bread with a Nehi grape! How come we can’t think but nobody else can cook?
Can’t tell from your OP; who are the “retards”, the ones who want to change the name, or those who don’t?
Don’t forget, it is possible to do a sensible thing for an entirely retardo reason.
I think drawing a parallel between a Japanese-American’s distaste for the term “Jap” and the hypothetical of white people suing Keebler because they make “crackers” is pretty goddamn retarded.
I don’t count because I’m just a transplanted Yankee, but Gunslinger was born and raised here and he seems fine to me.
Unfortunately I’ve found myself in the buckle of the Bible Belt, moving to a town that a few decades ago had a sign across Main Street that said “The Blackest Land, the Whitest People,” and generally overwhelmed by the fact that “King of the Hill” is a documentary.
Hang around Houston, in the vicinity of Rice U. You’ll find some of the smartest people ever to walk the earth there. Don’t let a few loudmouths ruin your view of Texas. Now Delaware, on the other hand…
Besides, “crackers” are from Georgia and Mississippi. We’re peckerwoods.
Let me get this straight… Jap Road was initially named to honor a Japanese family 100 years ago but now is considered a racial slur so, sensibly, they’re changing it to something more PC like, possibly, the original family’s sur name. A few longtime residents felt that was to deny the area it’s history and were resistant to the change but for that reason only and harbor no racist sentiments.
What, exactly, am I supposed to be offended by? Kindly explain the logic that this populates the state with retards?
I’ll never understand this collective labeling by state that so many engage in. Now that’s fucking retarded.
Jap Road?
Wow. The guys who named it that a hundred years ago probably had no idea there were any other ways to refer to them, So, now we do and the name is changed. Street names change all the time. So do place names. No big deal to me. But, it was important to the people lobbying for that particular change, so good for them.
BTW, there isn’t any dust in my eyes from thinking about my previous Texas homes. I lved in the Piney Woods of East Texas and the swamps, rivers, hills, and grasses of the Texas Gulf Coast. I also have family still in the Hill Country, and have worked quite a bit in the Panhandle. Let me tell ya, there ain’t no one way of describing Texas. Or Texans. We are an enigma to most anyone who isn’t Texan, tho, so I can almost understand Non Texan’s confusion and misconceptions.
Still, fighting ignorance and what not, right? To any non Texan: Don’t bash us just cause you ain’t us. Bash us individually for real reasons.
As for me, Southern by birth, Texan by the Grace of God. Yes, Texas is part of the South, but then again, it isn’t. It’s Texas, I’ll tell you whut!
And like my Daddy always used to say, he’d say, “Son. Never ask a man where he’s from. If’n he’s Texan, he’ll tell you. If not, no need to embarrass him.” 
Texas is a beautiful state and a fine place to live.
I try to not tell people from other places good stuff about Texas because I don’t want them coming here and I suggest you do the same. Let them think what they will as long as they keep north, west, and east our our borders. I would like tell them all “Yankee go home” except I’m a Fine Genteel Southern Woman. When I decide to let them live, I just holster my six gun and say “Well, Bless Your Little Heart!”- and we all (Texans, that is) know what that really means!
I work at a hospital that delivers 8500 new little Texans a year. We turn out the most attractive and well behaved children to be found anywhere and we do it by the ton!.
Fuck you Lissener. I’m getting mighty tired of fucknuts like you who paint entire groups of people with such broad brushes. Sure, there are idiots in Texas but you’ll find that most populous states have no shortage of idiots. Incidentally I would imagine the average IQ in Texas went up a few points after you moved.
Marc
I have not lived in Texas since 1946 and will not be held responsible for what I may have done, said or thought at the age of four years. My little sister is a Texas native by virtue of WWII but has chosen to live there, in College Station no less. I have always had the idea that there are a lot of Texans who suffer from a serious inferiority complex and make over compensation for that the vocation of a life time – but then I suspect that a lot of Marines are latent homosexuals, too.
None the less a single hospital producing some 8500 baby Texans, attractive and well behaved or not, is simply appalling. I can only hope that some of them are not of the Tom Delay, George Bush, Carl Rove ilk. Texas has long had its image problem but the politics of the past 10 or 20 years has made it worse.
My sister tells me that there is a fair number of reasonable people in Texas but that the red necks, especially the suit wearing variety, the peckerwoods, the roughnecks and the Baptist preachers are so bogged down in their own self righteousness that it is pointless to try to bring them into the light.
Neither Bush Jr. nor Karl Rove done got birthed in a Texas hospital.
As for DeLay, well… fuck.
I live about 50 miles from this place. People have been wanting to change that name for a long time. IIRC every time they try to change it, some of the people who live on the road go absolutely batshit. Incidentally these people were probably there 100 years ago when the road was named, and would probably be opposed just about any change you could imagine, good or bad. It’s hardly characteristic of the whole community, and surely not the whole state.
How much sense does it make to complain about some people’s use of an offensive word in a road name by stereotyping the population of entire (and rather large I might add) state and labeling them with your own word that others find insulting?
Maybe you should ask that they rename it Retard Road. 
Actually, the scary part is that they probably didn’t bother to put in the effort–
Stupid Texan #1: “Hey, let’s name the road after him as an honor!”
Stupid Texan #2: “Yeah!”
Stupid Texan #3: “Good idea!”
Stupid Texan #4: “It’s the least we can do.”
Stupid Texan #1: “Agreed! So… uh, anyone know what his name was?”
Stupid Texan #2: “Dunno, I just always called him ‘that Jap.’”
Stupid Texan #3: “Do they even have names?”
Stupid Texan #4: “Eh, just call it ‘Jap Road,’ they won’t know the difference.”
Stupid Texan #2: “There ya go! Jap Road it is!”
How freakin’ hard is it to (a) find out what someone’s name was, and (b) name the road after him?
Does Texas have Wayne’s World? I didn’t think so.
Way-ll. Here’s yer chance to try out that Time Machine yew always wanted!
