There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. - book reviews

Progressive, The, Dec, 1997 by Michael Feldman

by Jim Hightower HarperCollins. 292 pages. $23.00.

Here in Wisconsin, just a half-hour drive from Madison (former radical campus and current hotbed of student rest), lies Baraboo, home of the Crane Foundation, dedicated to the rescue and promulgation of endangered species of cranes. Since cranes, like so many of us, have trouble breeding in captivity, a volunteer at the Foundation flaps his arms, wiggles his ears, and flies into a passable imitation of a male in display to get the female--who must think she has now seen it all--to go into estrus. If, as rumored, the Crane Foundation is soon to be taken over by The Progressive to preserve and multiply the endangered Siberian Leftist, Jim Hightower will undoubtedly be called in to perform the mating dance. While extinction looms as a real possibility, his performance will be mildly amusing and full of down-home barnyard references, not unlike his new book, There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos.

Jim Hightower is from Texas where, if you're not colorful at an early age (you know the drill: "as hot as-----," "tougher than a-----," "about as useful as a-----"), they'll stuff you into the sack with the superfluous barn cats and down the well you'll go.

Governor Bush escaped this childhood fate for the same reason Saddam Hussein is still feasting on frozen Kuwaiti zoo ibex: His father is really from Maine. Hightower's father was the real thing, though, a certifiable Texan, as revealed in the chapter "Daddy's Philosophy" (a Texan refers to his "daddy" all his life; the next generation of progressive Hightowers may well begin their anecdotes, "As my two daddies used to say. . . ."). Jim's daddy started Little League in Denison, and believed that "everybody does better when everybody does better." Young Jim misrepresented this as a prairie-populist call-to-arms and not simply the kind of truism parents are always coming up with. (Just yesterday I told my six-year-old, "I don't like doing some things either, but I do them." I sure hope she doesn't base her life on this.)

Humor is a funny thing. Hopefully. As a humorist, Hightower falls somewhere between Garrison Keillor and Woody Guthrie, had he never picked up a guitar. He's a Will Rogers who's met a lot of guys he didn't like. Of course, I've been called a humorist myself, and am well aware of its pejorative tinge, much like the term "talent" in a contract. A humorist can get away with not being funny (after all, he's not a comedian) if he gives you pause or makes you clear your throat in a meaningful way. Hightower, although he's no Minnie Pearl, can do that. A humorist is someone who says funny things, but you never can remember them. Jim Hightower, being self-effacing, most often quotes other guys who say something funny you can't remember but he can, and does so repeatedly.

Since you are, after all, reading The Progressive, I think we can safely agree his heart's in the left place, but at the same time Hightower reminds me of those three guys who dress up in cowboy duds and sing Gene Autry songs even though you know they have Phi Beta Kappa keys that jingle jangle jingle.

He dares to be daring, but the cutting edge on the hoe needs sharpening. For example, although you can't tell how he comes down on the subject, he has a section called "Penises" (between "Parking Meters" and "Peppers") and refers early and often to cajones (which are edible in Texas), as well as "kicking ass."

I'm not a violent man, but I hope if I ever get my ass kicked it's by Jim Hightower since, unless he kicks with those pointy silver-toed boots they favor down there, I know I'm going to walk away. So, too, with his subject matter: Clinton, Gingrich, the late, lamented Democratic Party, corporate polluters, and Butterball turkeys. All of them live to fight another day.

Still there's a certain thrill in being swaggered at by a leftist. If Maria Shriver ever induces Arnold Schwarzenegger to come over to our side, there may some day be something behind it.

Michael Feldman is the executive producer and host of Public Radio International's "Whad'ya Know."