I’m sure I wasn’t the only person whose immediate reaction to Gov. Rick Perry’s reference to “charlatans and peacocks” in an email to four University of Texas regents was, “Well, he should know.”
Perry’s March 1 email was discussed Tuesday during a hearing in the Texas House. As the American-Statesman’s Ralph Haurwitz reported in today’s paper, the governor sent the email to buck up the regents who were under heavy legislative fire for allegedly micromanaging the University of Texas. The emails, Haurwitz reports (read his story here), show that Perry was “more deeply involved in the controversy concerning the University of Texas System Board of Regents than has previously been publicly known.”
Here’s what Perry — “rp” in the email — wrote to regents Brenda Pejovich, Alex Cranberg, Wallace Hall Jr. and Paul Foster:
I know you all get tired of being hammered by the charlatans and peacocks but the fight is being won I’m reminded of the Battle of the Bulge (WWII) when only a few hundred yards were gained a day and fighting was viciously personal and brutal the fight was for freedom but the real meaning for the infantryman was the one standing beside them in the fight I pray you all aspire to that same respect and devotion!
Onward and Upward.
rp
A charlatan is a fraud or pretender. A peacock is a show-off. As a multigenerational Texan from Perry’s neck of the state woods, the governor’s exaggerated boot-wearing self irks me to no end. Perry is 11 years older than I am, but I’m pretty sure I grew up around the same kind of people he knew growing up — cattlemen, farmers, cotton pickers, oilmen, welders, homebuilders and so on — but I never ever knew anyone who squinted and preened Texas the way Perry does. George W. Bush’s act was similar, but Bush was a transplant and didn’t know better. Perry should.
Charlatans and peacocks indeed.
But the most amusing piece of Perry’s period-averse email is that parenthetical reminding the regents that the Battle of the Bulge took place during World War II. Devotion will win the day — through a last-gasp German counteroffensive and heavy armor. Through dark, thick forests and deep winter snows. And meddling legislators.