COMMENT OF THE DAY: JUST MESSIN’ WITH YA “More than once, a non-Texan has cited ‘don’t mess with Texas’ to me as an example of what they perceive as Texans’ aggressive, arrogant superiority complex. I love the sheepish look I get when I tell them, ahem, it’s an anti-littering campaign, and not something we made up to sound like bad-asses. . . .” [Katk, commenting on Don’t Mess with Don’t Mess with Texas]
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Gosh, I can’t even count the times I’ve had to explain that anti-littering campaign to out-staters.
But, if they think we are just being bad-asses, let ’em continue to think so. Be afraid, very afraid of our effort to stop littering.
Bad-asses or not, I don’t know if anyone has looked around lately, but the anti-littering campaign isn’t working. This city looks like a dump. Maybe it’s due to budget constraints and the lack of cleansing thunderstorms to wash it all into the Gulf, but trash is really piling up around all the major freeways and feeder roads.
C’mon….don’t tell me the double entendre of the ad slogan went over your heads. Sure it was a littering thing originally, but it’s also taken on a meaning of it’s own above and beyond the littering. I wouldn’t expect foreigners to get it, nor would I bother correcting them. In fact, I think most Texans take more pride in the arrogance of that statement than the cleanliness of our state and would bet that there are more than a few natives who don’t know where the slogan originated.
Easily ten years ago, I sent my in-laws Don’t Mess With Texas tee-shirts which they proudly wear (in NY and CA) today!
I love the slogan. Like I Heart NY.
being that every politician and journalist jumps at the chance to use the phrase, it’s practically become our unofficial state motto. kind of funny since our real state motto sends an entirely different message.