Tag: People: Greg Abbott

Last fortnight’s news – for the two weeks ending 2025 07 20

Here’s a couple of weeks’ worth of interesting items from the news here in North Texas. No musical accompaniment this time, though we did spend a lot of time today listening to the late, lamented Asylum Street Spankers.

From Dallas:

From Fort Worth:

From Dallas County:

From Tarrant County:

From the suburban cities and towns:

From the suburban counties:

From throughout the North Texas region:

Local editorials and op-eds:

And miscellaneous news (including museums and zoos):

Hot Wheels

One of the tempests in the congressional teapot this month has been the uproar over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas) calling Governor Greg Abbott “Hot Wheels”. Abbott, of course, is a wheelchair user after a tree fell on him. It’s not the first time he’s been mocked for his disability; back in the summer of 2020, two Empower Texans staffers were caught making fun of him on a podcast that was accidentally published before it was edited.

Crockett is one of the new breed of aggressive Democrats who go after Republicans hard. For folks under about 45, there has been no time in which most prominent GOP politicians haven’t been mustache-twirling villains trying openly to destroy their political opponents and the federal government. Young Democrats and leftists see no point in playing nice with people who, in their lived experience, never play nice with them. And a lot of Democrats and left-leaning voters, sometimes including me, eat that red meat up.

It’s not like Abbott would have avoided knifing Crockett (politically) before this incident. And it’s not like Abbott hasn’t swallowed his pride and sucked right back up to the Wilks and Dunn machine in the years since their flunkies said worse about him than Crockett did. And it’s not like Republicans, including President Trump, haven’t made meaner fun of disabled folks before.

I have mixed feelings about what Crockett said: I’m not in a wheelchair and I doubt I will be in the near term, but I’ve been aware I might need one since I was in high school. If it were me, I’d laugh it off, but I’m not a Republican politician. I also despise Abbott precisely because of his policies toward his fellow disabled people; he’s been throwing us under the bus for a long time. Also he hates DEI, which includes benefits for disabled folks like him.

But it’s disingenuous for Crockett to say she didn’t think of his disability and his wheelchair when calling him “Hot Wheels”. She’s not wrong that Abbott’s a hypocrite. The MAGAts slamming her are hypocrites too, but their freedom to do what the little people can’t is part of their worldview. And even though she’s a member of the House of Representatives, the fact that Crockett is a Black woman makes her a little person in the eyes of MAGA.

The apology, or whatever she might say about calling Abbott “Hot Wheels”, isn’t for them. It’s for people like me, who would like to think our Democratic politicians are both more honest and a little better people than the worst Republicans.

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