Just when you think Rick Perry is really trying hard to change his polarizing ways, he appoints a controversial gay-baiting preacher to his 2007 Texas Inaugural Committee. Aren’t inaugurations supposed to be festive? Not with a buzz kill like Dwight McKissic on the team. Both Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst appointed the inaugural committee and its leaders. McKissic was Perry’s pick. He’s always a big hit at right-wing hate rallies, but you have to wonder what Perry was thinking when he tapped the angry rev to help plan the Jan. 16 event around the theme: “Texas: Imagine the Possibilities.” With McKissic on board, we imagine that anything is possible. The last time Perry and the preacher shared a stage together, McKissic created an ugly uproar by suggesting that gays and gamblers were to blame for Katrina’s deadly destruction in New Orleans. Afterward, a Perry spokesman said the governor, who was running for re-election at the time, didn’t agree with the sentiment but that he couldn’t go around muzzling every idiot with whom he shares a stage. No, he just appoints him to his inauguration committee.
This article appears in December 8 • 2006.
