Kelso: Willie is a character, but he's ours

AUSTIN, Texas — I never thought I'd see the day when a native Texan would write a letter to this newspaper trashing out Willie Nelson.

That's like spitting on the Lone Star flag, taking a leak in the chili, or saying, "You know, that Alamo pride thing? Isn't that a bit overblown?" You just don't mess with Willie, especially if you're from Texas.

But there it was Tuesday, in the letters to the editor, written by Don Scott. In his letter, Scott calls Willie Nelson "a rockabilly version of Michael Jackson" and a "shriveled-up has-been."

Scott, you see, is chapped because Nelson supported antiwar candidate Dennis Kucinich for president and just released a song about gay cowboys.

Twenty years ago, Texans looked the other way when they didn't like what Willie was doing, and comparing him to Michael Jackson would have gotten you a one-way bus ticket to New Jersey. Willie's a character, but he's OUR character.

Scott writes letters to the editor here fairly commonly and says he always included his e-mail address, until now.

"This time I did not," said Scott, a computer programmer who loves Texas chili and lived in California reluctantly for a couple of years. "I knew I would not be able to do my job, because I knew I would get deluged by so many people. I chickened out, I guess, huh?"

Oh, I don't know if I'd call that chickening out. I might call it life insurance.

What set Scott off was a song Willie came out with recently called "Cowboys Are Secretly, Frequently (Fond of Each Other)." Hey, I would have preferred it if Willie had done a song called, "How 'Bout That Bears Game?" But what the heck?

"I don't hate the guy," Scott said. "But then, when he came out with that song. And he says cowboys want to show their feminine side. Give me a break."

Scott ran into trouble with the Willie Nelson mystique at an early age, 16 or 17, he figures, when he attended a Willie Nelson picnic in the early '70s out at Liberty Hill.

"It was just horrible," he said. "The music was terrible. There were fights in the mud. A woman had a baby in the mud and named it Liberty. I saw a guy get his face kicked in in a fight, and there were people running around naked."

This is a problem? Apparently, those two years in California warped Scott's appreciation of real culture.

It also bothers Scott that Willie got crossways with the IRS. "When he got caught doing that, I thought, 'This guy's a phony.' "

But what really seems to annoy Scott is the liberal company Willie keeps. He just doesn't think it's right for a Texas icon to hang out with those people. He even referred to Kucinich as "basically a moon bat."

"Willie Nelson stands for something," Scott said. "He stands for Texas, and when he goes off and starts being best friends with Jimmy Carter and Dennis Kucinich, as far as I'm concerned, that stains Austin. That stains his iconic image."

Oh, by the way, Willie Nelson hangs out sometimes with Darrell Royal.

Go ahead, Scott. Say something tacky about Darrell Royal. I dare ya.

John Kelso writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: jkelso AT statesman.com.