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Ted’s Tone-Deaf Getaway

Senator Cruz jets off to Cancún while his constituents freeze in Texas.

If you’re reading this, you made it through Texas Hell. I have a theory that Hell for a Texan is not all fiery flames and such. No siree, we hop in our cars and get first-degree burns just from touching our steering wheels. We live and breathe hot. We get up in the morning, look up at the sun, and dare that sucker to let ’er rip! For Texans, Hell is what showed up last month: everlasting, bone-chilling, witch’s-teat-in-a-brass-bra-in-the-Klondike cold. 

The latest head count revealed that most of us lived through our recent Arctic Death Dare, and I’m dandy-proud of all of you who did. It just goes to show that Texans can put up with damn near anything. Well, except beans in chili. We can’t live with that.

I want to start by telling you a story. On the third day of the freeze, Karen got arrested in my hometown. Yep, that annoying Karen gal you’ve been hearing so much about.

There were only five people arrested that day. One of them was Karen, who repeatedly dialed 911 and demanded that they turn on her electricity. The kindly folks at the sheriff’s dispatch asked her to stop calling because there were people who needed their help and there was nothing they could do about her electricity.

She finally demanded her God-given right to lights and announced, “I am going to keep calling back until y’all send somebody over here to turn on my electricity!”

“Oh, okay, we’ll send someone right over,” the dispatcher cheerfully responded. Karen spent the night in jail, and was bonded out the next morning by a really-pissed-off husband.

Don’t tug on Superman’s cape, don’t spit in the wind, and don’t mess with a very cold Texas woman who has no water or electricity. She’s willing to go to jail. At least they have a generator at the jail, which is something to remember the next time you’re freezing in the dark.

Or rather, freezing in the dark alone, if you know what I mean. As it turns out, we were deserted by damn near every elected official we have.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz wins the February round of the Senate’s Lyin’ Olympics (and Honey, there was some powerful competition for that one). His gold medal was awarded after he admitted that he told lies to cover up his lies that he lied about. Honey, he came up with a banana split of lies. It was like layers of lies with a cherry on top.

The fun began when Cruz got caught at the airport by people carrying around something he didn’t expect. You know, those little cameras they bring along when they head to the airport. It’s the damndest thing—they just pulled those suckers out and snapped photos of the most shameless liar in Texas. And then, out of pure meanness, people posted those pictures on that Internet machine so everybody sitting at home in the cold, using their last few minutes of battery life to look at cat videos (or worse), sees Ted Cruz boarding an airplane headed to Cancún.

There was silence from Cruz until much later that night, after he had decided on a story: He was just escorting his daughters to Cancún to meet friends because he’s a good dad, and he was rushing back to Houston the next morning.

Come to find out, that was not the plan at all. So he had to make up another lie to make the first lie look reasonable: The girls had never flown before, and he had to take care of them on the airplane—you know, in case a wing fell off or something.

He even asked for a business-class upgrade on his ticket—but not for his wife or daughters! Kind of tells you what kind of a good dad he is. Sadly, he didn’t get the upgrade. (Have you heard the rumor that the upgrade was denied because he wasn’t wearing pants? I haven’t either, but I’m going to keep asking people until I find someone who has.)

I know they were saying on the radio not to get out and drive in that ice. Cruz must have heard that, too, since he asked for a Harris County sheriff to provide “an official escort” at the airport—because, of course, we have so many police officers to spare. Meanwhile, several of his neighbors were sharing text messages they received from his wife, who had invited them to come along to Cancún because the hotel was only $309 a night.

Yep, nobody likes Ted Cruz. Former Senator Al Franken always notes that he was the senator who probably liked Ted Cruz the best—before adding, “And I hate Ted Cruz!” 

But the worst part was the photo of his pitiful little white poodle puppy peeking out of the glass front door at home, where she was alone and cold. Her name is Snowflake. I could not make that up. 

And then there’s Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (an indicted felon for stock fraud and bribery), who took off with his wife to Salt Lake City. Mrs. Paxton explained that she went on “a previously planned trip to Utah, which included meetings that benefit her efforts to promote human dignity and support law enforcement.”

And let’s not forget Houston-area State Representative Gary Gates, who jetted to Florida faster than a bullet with legs because his wife “had not been feeling well” after a water pipe had burst in his daughter’s room, which he claimed had caused mold to grow that very night. Maybe he lives in a house with a previously installed mold farm. 

Let me refrain from mentioning that all three of these guys are white, straight, male Republicans, because you already know that.

One last thing: Three days after the freeze ended, Ted Cruz and his wife said they were “pretty pissed” about the neighbors leaking their Cancún invitation text. Ted went on to admit his disgust over the neighbors who put out Beto O’Rourke yard signs back when Beto and Ted were running for the Senate. He called that “rude.” 

Quick, someone get Ted a mirror so he can look in it and see what rude looks like.

This article appears in the March 2021 edition of OutSmart magazine.

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Susan Bankston

Susan Bankston lives in Richmond, Texas, where she writes about her hairdresser at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., at juanitajean.com.
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