On Clay Travis: Give me boobs or give me death

Just as only Nixon could go to China, turns out only Clay Travis could say the word “boobs” and have it reverberate as it has among the leftist “intelligentsia.”

Why? Because he’s a Democrat.

A proud one, too, who used to work for the profane “sports” website Deadspin — a website known more for spinning progressive agitprop and getting owned by Ted Cruz than for its sports analysis. And so when leftist trolls tried to label the sports radio host a Trump-shilling cretin following his frat-house frivolity on CNN last week, he not only called them to account but laid out in detail who he has voted and/or campaigned for (hint: his initials are BHO).

To sum up: Clay may be a red-state name, but Travis is blue-state through and through.

This is really important. I’m not sure how much public policy Travis and I agree on, but we both agree that the First Amendment and independent thinking are far more important than the political tribalism turning too many Americans into boobs.

As long as that remains true in the hearts of the majority of the people, we stand a chance to stay together as a country, even if we never again can truly come together on the most important existential issues that divide us. But once enough of us decide to have tolerance for everything but dissent, we will have neither tolerance nor dissent. A culture can often be judged by how it treats its contrarians, especially the pesky or impolite ones.

When a free people ceases its willingness to be inconvenienced in the public square, it will cease to be free.

Travis appears to know this and is proceeding accordingly, as few seem willing or able to do these days. That’s not to say he’s doing it the way I would. But while some find his crude citing of mammary glands offensive, many of those same people find my direct declaring of the scriptures and the Constitution equally so.

Thus, while Travis isn’t necessarily doing it the way I would do it, neither am I doing it the way many other pearl-clutching know-it-alls would. This brings to mind one of my favorite lines from the great evangelist D.L. Moody. When confronted by those who said he lacked polish and patience when addressing the evils of his day, Moody dismissed them with the following verbal slap: “I like my way of doing something better than your way of not doing anything.”

So if you’re in the arena fighting for righteousness and find Travis’ professed devotion to female anatomy sophomoric or offensive, you’ve earned the right to call him to account. But for those of you on the sidelines fiddling while the republic burns, I’d rather share a cultural fox hole with Travis than with you — regardless of how many Bible verses you’ve memorized or community service awards you’ve earned.

Sure, I’d prefer it, too, if the guy standing up, grabbing the jawbone of an ass, and using it as a weapon against our modern shibboleths of the damned would fit neatly behind a pulpit on Sunday mornings. Who wouldn’t prefer Gary Cooper’s dignified hero in “High Noon,” as the sheriff who lays down the law, over Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti-western anti-hero riding into town on a pale horse?

But if the choice is between the pleated-pants churchy and corporate types, who wouldn’t touch the jawbone of an ass for fear of splinters or calluses, or a roguish Samson who grabs it without hesitation and promptly starts a body count, I’ll take the latter every day and especially twice on Sunday.

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