Do folks like Texas Gov. Rick Perry keep their brains turned off because they're afraid the battery will run down?

One of the iconic moments in the Fawlty Towers canon: Basil -- after grappling, or attempting to grapple, with the beyond-hideous, unhearing Mrs. Richards -- asks an impertinent question.

BASIL: Madam, don't think me rude, but may I ask, do you by any chance have a hearing aid?
MRS. RICHARDS: A what?
BASIL [shouting]: A HEARING AID.
MRS. RICHARDS: Yes, I do have a hearing aid.
BASIL [still shouting]: WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO GET IT MENDED?
MRS. RICHARDS: Mended? It's working perfectly all right.
BASIL: No, it isn't.
MRS. RICHARDS: I haven't got it turned on at the moment.
BASIL: Why not?
MRS. RICHARDS: The battery runs down.

by Ken

Surely you remember Mrs. Richards, the monstrous, profoundly hard-of-hearing old crone --profoundly hard of hearing except when money is involved, that is -- from the "Communication Problems" episode of Fawlty Towers.

SIDEBAR: THE ROLE SHE'LL ALWAYS BE KNOWN FOR

Here's a bit more of Mrs. Richards, and here she is, even more hilariously, with the infamous hearing aid turned on. If you scrounge around YouTube enough you can probably piece together the entire "Communication Problems" episode, including the glorious scene of miscommunications between Mrs. Richards and Manuel in which, channeling the spirit of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?," she concludes from his acknowledgment, "Si, 'que' 'what,' " that the name of the (imaginary) hotel manager is C. K. Watt.

This is, we might note, such a frighteningly complete, totally commanding performance that I think we're apt to forget there's an actress in there making it all happen. Joan Sanderson (1912-1992) had a long and productive career on stage, screen, and TV, but there's no question which role she will be permanently remembered for.

I know that most people think the neanderthals of the Hard Right -- at least the ones who aren't bought off, pathologically dishonest, or plain nuts -- are simply too stupid to understand the matters they regularly maul in their public utterances. And certainly there is no detectable brain function behind the blitherings of, say, Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Sen. Jim DeMoron. Yet I have a deep reluctance to let them off the hook by assuming that the poor dears' brains are incapable of rational thought.

Which may be why, confronted with yet another outburst from that dimmest of guber-natorial bulbs, Texas's Rick "Hair Makes the Man" Perry, I always think of Mrs. Richards, holding out the possibility that when our Rick flaps his gums, the stuff that comes out is what it is because he simply hasn't got his brain turned on, perhaps fearing, like Mrs. Richards, that the battery will run down.

I realize that a brain doesn't work exactly like a hearing aid, and with that consideration in mind have formulated a related explanation: People like our Rick avoid using the brains that this God whom right-wing Crap Christians keep talking about gave them because it hurts. Yes, thinking requires real effort, and a kind of effort that -- as I tried to suggest in my brief sketch of Howie's and my ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Fulmer, who insisted that we use the word "think" only in connection with actual thinking -- many people go through their entire lives without attempting.

In the case of our Rick, as Reggie Perrin's old boss at Sunshine Desserts, C.J., might say, he didn't get where he is today by keeping his brain turned on. All indications are that in Texas state politics it can be "smart" to keep your brain firmly locked in the "off" position -- it's certainly the strategy the governor is hoping will earn him renomination over the formidable obstacle of a primary challenge from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Governor Rick's current woes have to do with a very bad thing he did back in 2004, and then another bad as well as really, really stupid thing he just did to try to cover up the bad thing from before.

The bad thing he did was to allow, as governor of Texas, a convicted murderer named Cameron T. Willingham to be executed on February 17, 2004. How, you wonder, how could that be a bad thing, especially in Texas? Aren't executions the state pastime, practically their favorite sport? Why, they were the funnest times that Governor Rick's predecessor, a dribbling fool named George W. Bush, had as governor.

What could be more fun, more law-and-orderish, more downright manly than giving the signal to string 'im up? Or fry the sumbitch. Or whatever the hell we do with 'em now. Nuke 'im? In the name of the majesty of the law, your gawd-fearing pro-life Crap Christian gets to for gawd's sake make some guy die!!! Hot damn! Does it get any better than that?

The problem at the 2004 end of Governor Rick's woes is that even at the time of Todd Willingham's execution, there was serious scientific doubt about some of the evidence on which his conviction was based. Now of course science don't count fer much down Texas way. But just because they worship ignorance down there, and on the evidence of the creeps who've occupied the governor's chair for going on 15 years now suggest that the sleaziest, lowest-account thugs can fill the seat, there is simply no way that anyone with even the tiniest shred of morality can sanction the execution of a man in the face of the evidently serious forensic doubts that existed in this case. If we are to continue to have pretensions to any kind of superiority for human beings as a life form, this has to be judged 100 percent, unequivocally unforgivable.

This, however, is Texas, where as fast as we can off the bad guys, more of 'em takes their place awaiting' their turn. (That's some swell tribute to the value of the death penalty as a deterrent.) And if there's one thing Governor Rick probably thought he'd never have to worry about, it was allowing old Todd Willingham to be offed. Why, in Texas the folks probably figure just bein' guilty of bein' executed is proof enough that you deserved to be offed. And after all, the crime of which Willingham was not only accused but convicted by a jury of his peers was pretty horrible: setting the fire in which his three children died.

So Governor Rick should have been home free. The only thing was, he couldn't nuke those forensic doubts along with the convicted man, and there were some folks who were mighty insistent and mighty angry that those doubts were never properly looked into, because they meant that when the doomed Todd Willingham said, “I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit," it may have been true.

As James C. McKinley Jr. reported Thursday in the New York Times:

In 2004, however, Gerald L. Hurst, an Austin scientist and fire investigator working in Mr. Willingham’s behalf, reviewed the evidence and determined the investigators had relied on several outdated and discredited methods to reach their conclusions. Most of the evidence could be explained by an accidental fire, Dr. Hurst said.

That conclusion was confirmed six weeks ago by an independent arson expert hired by the Forensic Science Commission, which was created in 2005 to investigate mistakes in crime laboratories after scandals rocked the one in Houston. The expert, Craig L. Beyler, of Baltimore, said in his August report that “the investigators had a poor understanding of fire science” and that the evidence they cited did not support a finding of arson.

Oops!

The commission had a meeting scheduled for this past Friday in Dallas, at which its expert, Craig Beyler, was supposed to testify. It didn't happen. If you look at the "Meetings" page of the commission's website, under the "Future Meetings" heading there is just this one listing:

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE COMMISSION'S OCTOBER 2nd MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

Let's let the NYT's James McKinley Jr. tell the story:

In what some opponents say looks like a political move and Gov. Rick Perry says was “business as usual,” the governor replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two other members on Wednesday, just 48 hours before the commission was to hear testimony from an arson expert who believes that Mr. Willingham was convicted on faulty testimony, a conclusion that has been supported by other experts in the field.

The terms of the three members who were replaced had expired September 1, but apparently all of them expected to be reappointed. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Dave Montgomery reported that the ousted chairman, Austin lawyer Sam Bassett, who had already been appointed to the committee twice by Governor Rick and expected to be reappointed, said, "I have no idea why he did it. No explanation was given to me."

According to the Star-Telegram's Dave Montgomery, Bassett's replacement as chairman of the commission, Williamson County (north of Austin) D.A. John Bradley, "said he did not know that he was under serious consideration for the post until he was told of the appointment on Wednesday by Perry’s office." Wednesday was the day of the announcement.

The ousted commission members, of course, had been working on this case since 2008, and two days before the scheduled hearing would seem a pretty screwy time to replace them. Not to Governor Rick, though. Montgomery reports:

Perry said that replacing members just as the panel is about to begin its review of the Beyler report is an optimum time for change.

"It makes a lot more sense to put the people in now and let them start the full process," Perry told reporters.

Perry described his decision to bring in new faces as "nothing out of the ordinary."

Now you could say that this is just Governor Rick being disingenuous. I would be more inclined to say that this is our Rick with his brain securely switched in the "off" position.

Everyone involved agrees that the turmoil the governor has created will at the very least delay the work of the Forensic Science Commission. Newly installed Chairman Bradley's "immediate priority," reports Montgomery,

will be to "get up to speed" on the job. He said he knows about the Willingham case only through news coverage. "That obviously is part of the homework I have to do," he said.

According to the NYT's McKinley:

Mr. Bradley said he did not know if he would continue the inquiry into the Willingham conviction that his predecessor had started. He said he wanted to consult with the lawmakers who created the commission about its mission.

Governor Rick should only be so lucky. The Forensic Science Commission is made up mostly of scientific types, people with what appear to be actual professional credentials. (The commission's motto, by the way, is "Justice Through Science.") Presumably five of the eight members are already "up to speed" on the Willingham case, and don't seem likely to be of a mind to let the matter disappear so easily.

Do you suppose this could be kind of a "Hail Mary pass" by the governor, hoping he can at least make the matter go away until after the March 2 gubernatorial primary? After all, a Texas GOP primary is apt to be decided by a small contingent of the hardest-core of the party's hard-core wingnut loons, people for whom qualities like "crazy" and "stupid" are likely to be pluses rather than disqualifications.

These are Governor Rick's people; Senator Kay's, not so much. Conservative as the senator unquestionably is, her conservatism is more in the old sense of a set of political beliefs, whereas those March GOP primary voters are more likely to be looking for 2009-style conservatism -- crazy, stupid, and criminally predatory.

It might be taken as yet another sign of the depth of our Rick's stupidity that he seems blissfully unaware of the now-established adage that it isn't the original crime that'll kill you, it's the cover-up. Already it looks possible that, instead of making the mess go away, he has handed Senator Hutchison a campaign issue. Just yesterday the AP reported: "Hutchison disagrees with Perry on commission move."

Still, on this count I'm inclined to give Governor Rick a pass. Look how many pols way smarter than him continue to fuck up this cover-up business. The shining exception is Karl Rove, and he comes close to qualifying as the exception that proves the rule. He has, after all, spent a political lifetime covering his massive behind. And all through his eight-year rampage during the Bush regime, he seems to have outsmarted us all by making sure his cover-up was in place, indeed built in, as the offenses were being committed.

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