The Press: Texan Tempest

As any Texan knows, the Lone Star State is the biggest, richest, toughest and most cultured in the land, with the prettiest women; Texans learn all this at their mothers' knees. But last week, in a free-swinging, heavy-handed piece of low humor, Esquire (circ. 819,000) took exception. The article, under the pen name Bernard Dorrity and the title "Let's Secede from Texas," described the state as a "geographical hemorrhoid." Its cotton land "is now poor and desolate," its grazing lands "worthless," its "mean, mangy and narrow" citizens are "boors when sober [and] downright dangerous when drunk." If Texas women "are pretty,...

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