So, last year, our esteemed Dudley Do-Right Manners and Morals Captain, Lt. Guv. Danny (Goeb) Patrick, the former Houston-based radio shock jock who broadcast his own vasectomy live, declared that the biggest problem facing Texans was the horror of the legal reefer being sold in convenience stores and vape shops. A lot of ink has been spilled about that nonsensical legislative priority, so I won’t allude much further there.
Now, he has discovered the gravest menace facing public education in this state, and it ain’t overcrowded classrooms, underpaid teachers or deteriorating buildings. No, no, no and no. The real emergency is that somewhere, in one of Texas’s 9,000-some odd public schools, a teenager might open a *gasp* book containing a naughty word.
Patrick, who held a press conference on this topic last week, threatened to lower the A-F accountability ratings of schools that do not pull books deemed as “inappropriate”. “We’re coming for the books,” Patrick said.
For this bizarre crusade, Patrick has enlisted the help of Bonnie Wallace, an activist who has made banning books her calling card with about the same aplomb that Col. Harland Sanders was associated with fried chicken.
Patrick, who was originally a man named Dannie Scott Goeb from Baltimore, stated that titles that are “vulgar” is what he is going after, but what is truly “vulgar” is the threat of knocking school districts’ accountability ratings down, which can have devastating ramifications. Drops in letter grades can put school districts on the path to being taken over by the Texas Education Agency.
Additionally, this kind of nonsense will maintain Texas’s standing as a national laughingstock, insofar as public education is concerned.
As a civil libertarian, Patrick’s bull manure crusade against THC products was woefully ridiculous to me, but this particular chapter concerns me even more. As a die-hard supporter of public education and as someone who wrote a book that would no doubt be declared “vulgar” by Patrick and Wallace, I find this new nonsense to be unconscionable.
Of the 2,198 books singled out by Patrick and Wallace on a list, many classics like Margaret Atwood’s dystopian tale, “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winner “The Color Purple” exist alongside hundreds of other great texts that teach young readers about a variety of perspectives, problems and experiences.
Many of the titles were unfamiliar to me, but I trust school districts to make wise decisions as to age-appropriate texts, and for many young readers, the school library is their only source of literature.
Patrick cited Senate Bill 13, which was passed in 2025 by the 89th Texas Legislature, and added new requirements to school districts’ library materials and catalogs, including the stipulation that parents have access to them and can control which library materials their children can access.
So, in other words, by existing statute, Patrick’s huffing and puffing is utterly nonsensical, as parents already possess extensive control under the bill that was passed into law, but in Dan Patrick’s world, students in Texas schools can ace every exam, earn scholarships and produce award-winning science projects, but their school district might still be branded a failure because *clutch the pearls* a novel in the library contained a colorful slang term for a human anatomical feature. If that comes to pass, then Texas should become the envy of every banana republic with a Department of Approved Literature.
The problem with this crusade, and others like it, is they begin with promises to remove pornography, but soon, the literary judgment of a nervous church deacon searching the dictionary for dirty words is developed. Books are not rendered obscene merely because they describe sex, abuse, addiction or human cruelty. Literature has been a great way to deal with uncomfortable subjects because, unfortunately due to the human condition, our lives often contain uncomfortable subjects.
Once I got through with some good-old-fashioned torrents of belly laughter at Patrick’s nonsense the other day, anger, then reality, began to set in. Public school students have access to smartphones, social media and the entire chaotic sewer that is the internet. However, Dan Patrick would have us all to believe that the great portal to depravity is the school library, a place where young people are expected to return materials in two weeks.
Texans should trust librarians, educators, local review procedures and, of course, PARENTS. Schools should select age-appropriate materials thoughtfully and remove genuinely unsuitable ones that might’ve slipped through, by way of a careful and transparent review. What they should not do is surrender education policy to politicians hell-bent on promoting nonsensical culture wars to mask a lack of leadership or caring for constituents.
In the light of all of this, something else dawned on me. As I watched the Lt. Guv spew his nonsense during his presser, I thought to myself, “He looks just like someone, but who?”. It finally dawned on me: Dan Patrick is the stunt double for Vaden Todd Lewis of the legendary Toadies, and this fact likely bothers Patrick.
As I tried to call to mind who Patrick’s doppelganger was, I just happened to come across a news story about the Toadies, and it clicked. You see, gentle readers, the Toadies are one of my favorite bands, as they are for many, many Texans. I saw the Fort Worth-based rockers absolutely kill it back in the fall of 2024 at the True Vine Brewing Company in Tyler, and keep in mind, I had not seen them in about 25 years at that point. When Lewis came onstage, he had aged, and I almost didn’t recognize him. The skinny, intense and bespectacled rocker who rose to fame in the ‘90s on the strength of songs like “Possum Kingdom” had transformed into a grey-haired, jowled specimen who looked like Dan Patrick’s twin. However, a key difference here: Vaden Todd Lewis is one of the greatest voices to ever emerge from Texas, and his band is still universally loved. “Possum Kingdom” is played in constant rotation on hard rock stations and places like Lithium on Sirius XM. Patrick, on the other hand, is reviled, even by many in his own party.
And it is stunts like his war on “vulgar” books – culture war theatrics performed at the expense of intellectual freedom, local control and good sense – that help make him such a despised presence in the state legislature.
If Texas officials truly want to protect children, they might actually look at real problems to solve to improve schools and the overall educational experience, and not by prowling the shelves like the vice squad at a Scholastic Book Fair.
Chris Edwards is editor of the Tyler County Booster, a sister newspaper in the Polk County Publishing Group. He can be reached at cedwards@polkcountypublishing.com.
