Welcome to our annual get-together, with sane people on one side of the table and complete nutjobs on the other, separated only by the hot air between us. Every year around this time, we Weekly scribes feel compelled to gather ’round the deep fryer to draw attention to all the wrongdoing and evilness in our backyard every day. Pointing it out throughout the year doesn’t impact policy or procedure much, so we always use the end of November as a time to reiterate just how unhinged some of our family members, friends, neighbors, business leaders, public servants, and elected officials have been. The point: Maybe if enough of us shout/march loudly in response, the power structure can begin to crumble from the bottom up, because all those fat (white) cats at the top can’t insulate themselves to only their bootlickers. Basically, the country’s getting browner, more feminine, and gayer every day, and there’s nothing haters can do to stop it. Except maybe win a few elections on the way to the grave, the very plots, I’m delighted to say, upon which we will gyrate, howl, and smear sheep’s blood all over our exposed bellies one day soon. — Anthony Mariani, Editor
Talkin’ Turkey
This summer, the City of Fort Worth swung open its taxpayer-funded doors to Nazis and bigots. White supremacists were permitted to speak at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden (a public place of calm, contemplation, and reflection!), and gay-bashing peeping Toms were allowed to spread their particular brand of bathroom-prowling hate at a community center on the Near Southside (“Peace Police,” Jun 13). The city argued that it’s always rented to anyone, regardless of affiliation (some b.s. about the First Amendment), but then we (“State Sanctioned,” Jun 5) and a couple other rags pointed out the actual policy: “Use of community centers shall not be permitted to groups which practice, profess, or have as their policy (official or unofficial) discrimination against persons on the basis of sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, color, or national origin.” The city said it would stop renting to just anyone with cash in their hand. That’s the thing about the First Amendment. Free speech does not protect hate speech, and you’d have to be a complete dupe or a Republican — like nearly every member of Fort Worth leadership — to not see that. As if we weren’t aware already, the hoods are off downtown.
Butterballin’
As we’re only five months removed from the Dallas Mavericks’ first NBA Finals appearance in 13 years, it is easy to forget that in the middle of that magical season, owner Mark Cuban sold off roughly three quarters of his stake in the team. For more than two decades, Cuban has been the de facto mascot for the organization. His wild courtside antics have calmed in recent years, but as a fixture on the entrepreneur cosplay TV show Shark Tank, he’s been the most visible owner in the league. Not only did the move seem random and unexpected, but the buyer deserves a hefty amount of scrutiny. Las Vegas Sands, the casino conglomerate of the Adelson family, is now the carpetbagging majority owner of our hometown team.
It’s the casino angle that apparently prompted the sale. With the Adelsons now in town, lobbying for legalized gambling in Texas is about to shift into hyperdrive. Cuban has been a vocal supporter of legalizing sports betting, and visions of Mavs-linked sports books and casinos swirling around his head were too big a temptation to resist. For those eager to lay down bets, the smart money is on a new Mavs arena with a built-in casino soon breaking ground at the former site of Cowboys Stadium in Irving (land that Las Vegas Sands has already purchased) as soon as the Adelsons money-whip the Texas legislature into legalization. And money-whipping politicians is precisely what they do.
The Adelson name might not necessarily be a household one unless you’re referring to the houses of Congress. Led by the late Sheldon Adelson and now his widow, Miriam Adelson, they have been the top financial contributors to Republican political campaigns in three out of the last five election cycles, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on GOP causes. Even if that dough is being spent to further your own particular political ideology, surely we can all agree that billionaires buying political influence is not only gross but unhealthy for democracy.
The idea that cheering on Luka Dončić et al. now directly supports political quid pro quo is heartbreaking. Cuban has been an outspoken critic of many of the candidates the Adelsons have bankrolled, yet when it comes down to it, he’s still a billionaire in the billionaire club and he can look past it even if we fans have a hard time doing the same.
Courtesy Facebook
Board’s Head
Everyone has that one family member who’ll show up to Thanksgiving dinner and vow they’ll be making changes this year. They’ll stop chugging PBR before 10am every day, they say, and dating strippers (sorry, “entertainers”). They’re not going to eat every deviled egg and pass out on the couch before Grandma takes the pumpkin pies out of the oven. They’ll stop blaming immigrants for the fact that they’ve been “laid off” … for the third time this year. But we all know they won’t. Sadly, for Fort Worthians, our local school district is that family member who swigs holiday brandy and makes the same empty self-improvement promises time and time again.
It all began with Mayor Mattie Parker calling for greater accountability from the board for feeling less-than larger districts like Dallas and Houston, which have touted their improvements over recent years. Ironically, those two blue-bubble cities are improving, as was Fort Worth, but Parker scrapes her knees before the Christian right, who are gunning to gut public education at large, so of course she was going to spew, as Taylor Swift would call it, “covert narcissism” disguised “as altruism.” Parker vowed to help the district in any way she could in what was actually a not-so-veiled threat. The board responded expectedly: by throwing three-year superintendent Dr. Angelica Ramsey on the sacrificial sword and reinstalling Dr. Karen Molinar (again) as the interim big cheese while the search and hamster wheel begin anew.
But the only people suffering amid this grandstanding back-and-forth are the students and residents. Living in a district in constant flux, they’re continually trying to prove to conservative leadership that they’ll jump through the performative pre-meal prayer when they actually shouldn’t give two piles of canned cranberry sauce what the folks at the heads of the table think. All students and residents can do is hang on, because that unwelcome family member doesn’t really want to improve themselves anyway.
Pass the Gravy … to the Rich Folks
Continuing the trend of lawmaking priorities that in no way benefit the majority of Texans — which has been his laser focus since taking office nearly 10 years ago — Gov. Greg Abbott is promising to add private school vouchers to his list of legislative “accomplishments.” He has made his career on an agenda that panders almost exclusively to the white Christian right. His resume boasts: gutting the state’s tax revenue, constructing a wasteful and impractical border wall, and claiming to be a “champion of personal liberty” by doing things like banning pornography and women’s bodily autonomy.
While Abbott’s attorney general, documented fraudster Ken Paxton, wastes millions of tax dollars on lawsuits against cities whose citizens willfully pass relaxed cannabis policies, the governor is working to make sure those same tax monies go to line the pockets of the Christian education industry. Not only is his administration in the process of shoving Jay-zus and anti-historical propaganda into Texas public school curricula, but he’s intent on diverting funds meant to support all public education toward religious (let’s be honest, really just Christian) institutions, so that lily-white suburbanites don’t have to learn about the existence of dinosaurs or civil rights leaders or deal with the discomfort of sending their brood to school with brown kids.
The only thing this is likely to accomplish is exacerbating the already untenable public-school teacher exodus and moving Texas even lower from its current rank of 29th in state education quality to the obvious eventual goal of 49th. (No one will ever out-ignorant West Virginia.)
Courtesy Facebook
Jonesing for Some Bird
Despite a surprise win against the Commanders last Sunday, there’s no way to see this Cowboys season as anything but a complete and total failure. The front office, led by the crazed ego of owner/“GM” Jerry Jones, chose to address the personnel deficiencies highlighted by the meltdown against Green Bay in the playoffs last year by essentially doing nothing. After declaring an “all-in” strategy for the offseason, the Jones boys apparently decided that addition by subtraction would be their tactic.
They sat idle and watched as a large contingent of their depth left to join Dan Quinn in Washington and willfully ignored replacements during free agency, looking to the draft instead. There, they found little help. Though the last decade has seen the Cowboys hit on twice as many picks as they’ve missed on, the troubling trend of selections who can’t make it onto the field which began last season (Mazi Smith, anyone?) continued this year. Offensive tackle Tyler Guyton, a first-rounder, has been benched twice so far for excessive penalties and poor performance, and a second-round edge rusher, Marshawn Kneeland, has missed the last seven weeks with a torn meniscus.
Jerry’s big excuse for not signing FA’s currently playing at All-Pro levels on team-friendly deals across the league was that the salary cap was forcing his frugality. Had Jones and company been more proactive, they might not have been in that position. Yet they played chicken in contract negotiations with their two best players, dragging the process through the entirety of training camp only to then sign wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and quarterback Dak Prescott to the exact deals the two players were bargaining for in the spring, the latter making Prescott the highest paid player in the history of the NFL.
Sending a patchwork roster onto the field led by a lame-duck coaching staff with antiquated philosophies has torpedoed the season with the team hovering around a Top-10 pick in next year’s draft. Let’s hope they hit on that one, because that’s all they apparently have right now.
Turkey in 4K
There’s surveillance video. There are actual moving pictures of the cop grabbing the woman by the arm and whipping her face-first to the ground (“More Pain for Cop Watcher,” Aug 21). It’s indisputable. A Fort Worth police officer manhandled 60-year-old cop watcher Carolyn Rodriguez and gave her a disjointed shoulder, assorted lacerations, and a concussion — and while she was booked on suspicion of interfering with public duties, resisting arrest, and evading arrest, the officer was reassigned out of patrol pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Well, he’s back on the streets, and Rodriguez’s trial is on Dec 9.
Local legacy media’s coverage has been almost as bad (“Takedown, Blue,” Jun 28) as the assault itself. With the exception of the Star-Telegram (and us), pretty much every other local station, newspaper, and magazine soft-played what actually happened and what anyone with two functioning eyeballs can clearly see. The reason? Access. Lousy access.
If WFAA, the Morning News, NBC 5, and all the others wrote the ugly truth — that a Fort Worth cop slammed the living shit out of an elderly woman — it might have pissed off the cops, and then when Mr. Local Legacy Media Gumshoe goes calling Fort Worth police for information on some totally unrelated cases, FWPD conveniently forgets to call him back. And if this sounds a lot like national legacy media’s kid-gloved treatment of that orange rap/cist who’ll be stinking up the White House in a couple months, that’s because it’s exactly what it is, and local legacy media should be ashamed. But we know they aren’t.
Courtesy YouTube
Put on Your Bibs
The city was all abuzz over the Michelin Star coming to town earlier this month. No Tarrant County restaurants won anything, but three were bestowed with Bib Gourmand Awards. The Michelin people say that’s their distinction for “great value” that “highlights simple yet skillful cooking at an affordable price.”
While absolutely not taking anything away from the accomplishments of Bib Gourmand winners Birrieria y Taqueria Cortez, Goldee’s, Panther City BBQ, and Arlington’s Smoke ’N’ Ash BBQ, it seems the Michelin reviewers stopped at the casual end of our culinary spectrum and never ventured further.
Some of the area’s food writers and hospitality professionals chalked this up to the local culinary scene’s apparent lack of the elements that, say, the scenes in Houston or Austin possess. We’re not a port city, they say. We rely heavily on beef, they say. We don’t support new restaurants, they say. Well, shame on them for not having a little more pride in what makes our town’s food scene vibrant.
Criteria for a Michelin Star include “using high-quality products and ingredients, mastering culinary techniques, showcasing the chef’s personality in the cuisine, and providing value for money.” At least two of the five kitchens that Jon Bonnell owns (Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine, Waters, Jon’s Grill, Buffalo Bros) tick off most of those boxes. So do Ellerbe Fine Foods and the venerable Paris 7th Restaurant as well. Osteria 61 is expensive, but dining there is exquisite, as it is at their sister restaurant Grace. Nona Tata or Lonesome Dove seem to also meet three of the four criteria. And Don Artemio, anyone? Anyone?
Then, there’s the Michelin Green Star, “an annual award which highlights restaurants at the forefront of the industry when it comes to their sustainable practices. [Restaurants] hold themselves accountable for both their ethical and environmental standards and work with sustainable producers and suppliers to avoid waste and reduce or even remove plastic and other nonrecyclable materials from their supply chain.”
Perhaps the Michelin folks missed James Provisions in Hurst, where owner Deborah Williamson doesn’t use seed oils, selects the menu seasonally with as much locally sourced produce as she can find, and offers a plant-forward menu. Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine pretty much started the farm-to-table market here in Fort Worth, and Ellerbe and Righteous Foods also deserve a nod for their sustainability practices.
We could go on, but then we’d become tiresome. Take yourself to Goldee’s or Panther City, order the injera brisket nachos at Smoke ’N’ Ash, or get gloriously birria-soggy at Cortez and be happy that Michelin’s master tastemakers noticed a few good restaurants here — even if they missed a whole lot more.
White Meat Only
What’s really sad about political discourse today is that one side is totally OK palling around with Nazis. Didn’t we fight a war to get rid of them at one point? And isn’t it totally fine to punch one in the stupid face whenever possible? Don’t tell that to the Arlington Heights High School fans in the crowd at a football game against the mostly Hispanic North Side High School. Whenever the North Side cheerleaders went over to shake the hands of the Heights squad, they were verbally assaulted from the stands, called racial slurs and told to go back to Mexico (“Follow the Leader,” Sep 19). And there was at least one Heights fan waving a flag for Donald Trump, the U.S. president-elect who’s described Mexicans and other immigrants from south of the border as “murderers,” “rapists,” “vermin,” and “animals” “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Can a handful of knuckleheads give everyone else a bad name? Yes, but since no one was held accountable due to “conflicting reports,” Heights said, we can guess the school is just A-OK with a status quo in which deferring to the worst scenario would piss off Whitey. And, lordy, we can’t have that. They might tweet mean things about us!
Stuffed
Even though the neighbors don’t want it and 300 others signed a petition against it, Fort Worth City Council will vote on allowing it on Dec 10, once again underlining the fact that our elected officials rarely work for us and instead slave for ideologues, overlords, and their biggest donors.
In no universe, should Mercy Culture Church’s shelter for human-trafficking victims even get past the Starbucks-conversation stage when the address would be made public — for victims in recovery, privacy is paramount for obvious reasons. Now, even though the city’s zoning commission decided against the Justice Residences, City Council is going to make the ultimate decision, and the head lawyer representing the church/cult has been claiming he has the votes to move forward with the facility. This is wrong on so many levels, but welcome to Christian Nationalist Nation, y’all.
Due to shoehorning in a 43,000-square-foot building with 100 beds, traffic will explode. The already backed-up area near I-35W and Oakhurst Scenic Drive will choke, sending a lot of the residents of this old, beautiful neighborhood elsewhere and driving down property values for those who can’t afford to relocate or simply don’t want to, all because a cult cosplaying as a church wants to impose Jesus on vulnerable souls.
Not Thicker than Oil
Texas is no longer for sale. It has now been completely purchased by a wrecking crew of wealthy, rapacious rednecks and religious nuts for only a small fraction of their wealth. No worries. I’m sure they won’t want anything in return, right?
As inane MSM commentators opine that Democrats are too elitist because they believe in facts, Republicans have inexplicably been christened as populists — even though they had two wealthy people who graduated from Ivy League schools as their standard bearers alongside new Texan Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. Never mind that the Biden-Harris administration, with more than two years of full employment, actually helped working-class people more than Donald Trump did in his first term and more than he’s ever likely to do in his second — and, we hope like hell, last — stint.
In Texas, we’re used to oil tycoons giving our leaders their marching orders. Evidently, we like our air and water dirty. We’re proud of our high maternal death rate, forcing women to give birth and criminalizing helping them leave the state to get the medical care they need. We’re not concerned if workers die in our blazing summer heat because they no longer have mandated water breaks. We love our grid failing us both in the summer and winter. As Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged us during COVID times, we’re happy to sacrifice our very lives for the wealthy few. We love our leaders to speak like Trump, with just the right mixture of total ignorance and bullying bluster. And, soon, because the wealthy zealots have completely taken over, we’re going to have a public school system so underfunded we’ll have to sell it at bargain-basement rates.
And for all this greatness, we have to thank three billionaire oilmen from West Texas: Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers (Dan and Farris), who helped finance Abbott’s plan to unseat rural Republicans who bravely voted against his ridiculous voucher bill — a big wet kiss to the rich and a finger in the face to the rest of us.
It’s now certain that the legislature will vote to break with the Texas Constitution and underfund our public schools. This is what corrupt Republicans do: underfund a public institution until near-death, then sell it to cronies for half-price.
Dunn, Dan, and Farris do all this out of their “strong” Christian beliefs. They answered fellow billionaire Betsy DeVos’ call to champion vouchers to “advance God’s kingdom.” They put millions into Texans United for a Conservative Majority, a PAC whose logo depicts our state capitol topped with a crucifix. So, in Texas, it’s Christian Nationalism, here we come!
For professed Christians, we must say, this trio of billionaires harbors more than a few unchristian beliefs, like further militarizing our already militarized border, stopping gay marriage, and increasing the suicide rate among trans people in high school. Well, these fat cats would say they’re only against trans teens, but it comes out to the same thing.
Dunn and the Wilks brothers’ beliefs are curious to followers of Jesus, who was a first-century Palestinian rabbi who believed in the power of radical love and preached for the poor against the wealthy. Gays were well-known in Jesus’ time, yet he never condemned them. Likewise, as a Jew, Jesus would have followed the Torah’s frequent admonitions to take care of the sojourners or, as we would call them, immigrants.
But, as we now know, facts are elitist. If, like our country, Texans want to be governed by obscenely rich ignoramuses, so be it, but let’s stop kidding ourselves. We’re no longer a democracy. Oligarchs rule. The people drool.
Courtesy Texans United for a Conservative Majority PAC
Empty Plates
Over the river and through the woods, wait at a stoplight for 20 minutes, then drive down a gravel road to grandmother’s house we go to vote against school-improvement bonds. Exurb voters are really frying their own turkeys this year, and when they call the fire department to put out the inevitable grease explosion, they’ll have to wait, because they live in the middle of freaking nowhere.
Third suburbs across North Texas, namely Justin (Northwest ISD), Argyle, and Rockwall voted down minute tax increases to help their local school districts balance their budgets or make other capital improvements. We get it. People don’t want to pay more taxes, but if you’re not willing to fork out an extra 20 bucks a month in property taxes to help local kids, why do you live in the middle of nowhere anyway? There’s nothing there, save for some chain restaurants and other seemingly rustic crap that only the whitest of white people enjoy. These are the kind of places you’re supposed to move to because they have good schools and are full of other parents running from real life, back to an imaginary 1980s existence, when kids could be kids — as long as they’re the right color and have the requisite creature comforts. While it might be nice to save enough money every month to keep Netflix ad-free without concern, these folks are handicapping their own home values by degrading their local school districts and driving potential buyers to the next personality-less custom-builder farm.
Knives Are Out
The Pride event had a very clear purpose: LGBTQ+ children and their parents could visit early, and LGBTQ+ others could party into the night. But that clarity did not stop right-wing bloviators from conflating the two events into one and dragging the host through the worst of social media (“Anti-Rainbow Coalition,” Sep 27). As if Ivy Aranaught would have backed down. The owner of Higher Purpose Emporium on the North Side has been through worse, much worse, since opening three years ago. At her first Pride event, a guy brandished a firearm at her. Aranaught did not back down then and isn’t backing down now. “The very first Pride fair that we did, we had protesters come from, like, three different churches,” Aranaught remembered. “This guy was calling me and this 12-year-old girl a bunch of slurs, accusing us of being pedophiles.” No, Aranaught will still be selling her metaphysical wares no matter how many turkeys hiding behind crosses try to put her out of business (“Reaching Higher,” Oct 30).
Photo by Jason Brimmer
Undercooked Turkey
It’s been a couple of seasons from hell for the evangelical Christians in North Texas. Robert Morris, a co-founder of Southlake’s Gateway Church and former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump (heh), was forced to step down in July because of what a press release described as “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady,” and whichever PR flack described Morris’ pedophilia with those words should crawl into a hole. Morris was only the highest profile of a series of churchmen forced from their jobs, from Tony Evans at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church (for an unspecified sin) to Josiah Anthony at Argyle’s Cross Timbers Church. Why haven’t these churches been publicly reduced to ash the way the Catholics and their sex abuser priests were 20 years ago? Mostly because these churches don’t belong to the same organization or denomination and don’t have some ecclesiastical authority overseeing them from Rome or Jerusalem. Or Jacksonville. That makes for a more dangerous situation, because although Gateway’s followers voted with their feet and left the church by the thousands, it’s harder for the powerful men at these institutions to be held accountable when they step out of line (especially knowing they can run for president as Republicans). Word to all these churches: Trust in God, but pay for a background check on your pastor. In the meantime, we give these abusers some turkey fat in the collection plate.
This story reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
