Reply #4: That's a pretty bad Kinky interview, but THIS gets my vote for his worst:

[Czolgosz]

Susannah McNeely: I seem to remember a year or so ago in a television interview, you said that at 60 you wanted nothing more or less than to be the Salsa King of Texas. And after your bid for Justice of the Peace in ’86, you said you were leaving “that worthless tar baby that is politics” to the young people. What happened that changed your mind and prompted you to run for governor of Texas?

Kinky Friedman: Nothing changed my mind, that’s still correct. This is not a political campaign. It’s a spiritual one—a spiritual calling.

...

KF: Well, you’ve got people falling all over themselves to apologize for saying “Merry Christmas” for instance. That’s a good example. It’s political correctness gone awry. Smoking regulations are strangling the live music scene in Austin, the live music capital of the world. Another example is prayer in schools: people are afraid of even nondenominational prayer in schools, and I say, what’s wrong with a kid believing in something? And now it’s the cowboy, the word’s being used derogatorily; and I think that’s wrong.

SM: How do you think “cowboy” has been used pejoratively?

KF: By Europeans, by some Americans . . . maybe it’s because of George W., maybe not. It’s been used that way to mean a loose cannon or a bully. But a cowboy has never been that. A cowboy has always stood up for the little people. He’s always been a knight out of time, beloved by all the children of the world. I want to preserve the cowboy as he really is. I want to take us back to a time when the cowboys all sang and the horses were smart. I’m gonna beat this wussification, if I’ve got to do it one wuss at a time.

...

SM: So does this idea of the honorable cowboy have anything to do with why you threw your support behind President Bush in this last election? You did, didn’t you?

KF: Yes. I did in this last election, but I didn’t vote for him the first time.

SM: Who did you vote for in 2000?

KF: I voted for Gore then. {NOTE: THIS IS A LIE, SEE: http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4517585} I was conflicted. . .but I was not for Bush that time. Since then, though, we’ve become friends. And that’s what’s changed things.

SM: So it’s your friendship with him that’s changed your mind about having him as president more than his specific political positions?

KF: Well, actually, I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy. On domestic issues, I’m more in line with the Democrats. I basically think he played a poor hand well after September 11. What he’s been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think.

...

Link: http://www.ruminator.com/content/040501.html