Kinky Friedman – Sold American

Kinky Friedman has been getting by on the same punchlines for 30 years now. But back in the day, they were some disturbingly funny punchlines. And long after his mystery novels have gone out-of-print, what is likely to linger in the cosmos is 1973’s Sold American — the Kinkster’s masterpiece, and an ahead-of-its-time landmark of political incorrectness.

Where plenty of satirists talk the talk about being equal-opportunity offenders, Friedman walks the walk. Sold American pokes vicious fun at feminists, rednecks, minorities, Jews, Jesus freaks and mass murderers, among others. As with Randy Newman, plenty of folks didn’t like the joke. “Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed” earned Friedman the National Organization for Women’s “Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year” distinction, and many people were reduced to tears over “The Ballad Of Charles Whitman” (a brazenly tasteless ode to the infamous Texas Tower sniper).

“A real rip-snorting trigger squeezer,” Friedman brayed, “Charlie proved a big crowd-pleaser.” But most people missed the apocalyptic following verse, in which Friedman sketched a portrait of a populace in the midst of the tragedy: “Some were dying, some were weeping, some were studying, some were sleeping, some were shouting, ‘Texas No. 1!’ Some were running, some were falling, some were screaming, some were balling, some thought the revolution had begun.”

Friedman would probably be the first to say the revolution hasn’t ended yet.