Rod Dreher

The Hispanic Thing Really Is A GOP Problem

Texas, Our Texas

By Rod Dreher • November 15, 2012, 9:46 AM

In the clip above, Leslie, a star of the reality show “Big Rich Texas” — filmed in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, naturally – offers tips on how to stage a stylish baptism in one’s backyard swimming pool, where the water may be cleaner than those messy church fonts. She uses the made-up word “baptee” (= candidate for baptism), and offers this sage advice to women vesting for the beginning of a new Christian’s eternal life: “This is not the time to be boobalicious.”

She is serious.

There will always be a Texas. There has to be.

Posted in A Sense of Place, Hathos. Tagged baptism, Big Rich Texas, boobalicious.

27 Responses to Texas, Our Texas

Teddy says:

November 15, 2012 at 10:08 am

It’s not so much a “true” reality show as it is an openly scripted one. The show is described as a part-reality, part-scripted soap opera. However the reality aspect of it must have some bite to it; as the cast members have all sorts of litigation in the works against each other.
J.J. Gonzalez says:

November 15, 2012 at 10:14 am

OMG!!! LOL!!!

We’ll be looking forward to your new “boobalicious” category filling up. The election is over. We have moved on.
Anglican says:

November 15, 2012 at 10:26 am

I dunno, I kinda liked that and even agreed to some degree. As someone who helps with communion at church, that is also not a time to be boobalicious, it is amazing what some people wear to church these days,even at an Episcopal church.Yes Texas is special, may it always be so.
MBrown says:

November 15, 2012 at 11:00 am

As my friend said after watching this video, “If a baptism isn’t a time for being boobalicious, then what is the right time?”
James says:

November 15, 2012 at 11:17 am

Not “Texas, Our Texas.” Dallas, Our Dallas. The good Lord and every Texan west of I-35 knows there’s a HUUUUGE difference.

Big, rich, Dallas is about as attached to reality as Joan Rivers’ current face.
Nate says:

November 15, 2012 at 11:22 am

“There will always be a Texas. There has to be.”

Yes, in hell.
texasaggiemom says:

November 15, 2012 at 11:48 am

There is a follow up to this:
http://www.mystyle.com/tv-shows/big-rich-texas/articles/detail.jsp?id=10140

These people are the ones who respond “none”, but “spiritual”. And that apparently means whatever they want it to mean.
Sands says:

November 15, 2012 at 11:59 am

What James said.

Texas is a big state, and superficial Dallas does not represent the Texas I know.
thomas tucker says:

November 15, 2012 at 12:02 pm

Speaking of which, Nate, that reminds me of the Civil War general who said if he owned Texas and Hell, he’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.
Rod Dreher says:

November 15, 2012 at 12:05 pm

Not “Texas, Our Texas.” Dallas, Our Dallas.

Hate to tell you, but the gated community in which this is filmed is in Fort Worth.
Sands says:

November 15, 2012 at 12:18 pm

“Hate to tell you, but the gated community in which this is filmed is in Fort Worth.”

OK. “Dallas metroplex, our Dallas metroplex.”
Evgeni says:

November 15, 2012 at 12:27 pm

That makes me sad.
J says:

November 15, 2012 at 12:35 pm

This is the best advance on this semantic front since Paul Fussell termed 1960s-80s Hawai’i tourists and their establishments “boob Valhalla”. Credit must also be given to whoever coined the term “booboisie”.

Someone should open a museum for White American Evangelical Christian Culture’s many curious artifacts. Forth Worth seems like a natural place to put it.
James says:

November 15, 2012 at 12:47 pm

“Hate to tell you, but the gated community in which this is filmed is in Fort Worth.”

Then her hair should be bigger, and the baptizer a man.
Matt says:

November 15, 2012 at 1:19 pm

There will always be a Texas. There has to be.

As someone who lived in Texas (Houston) for a decade, I can’t count the number of ways I disagree with that statement. And I’ve been to Dallas enough times to appreciate and embrace the old saying, “Dallas is the pretty sister with the lousy personality while Houston is the ugly one with the good personality.
Catechist says:

November 15, 2012 at 1:43 pm

My second-born would have disagreed with the sentiment. She was so miserable at her baptism that the only way to stop the non-stop high-decibel screaming was boobaliciousness. Our understanding deacon pretended not to notice how she was being calmed while he baptized her.
thomas tucker says:

November 15, 2012 at 1:48 pm

btw, the old comment about Dallas and Fort Worth used the be that Fort Worth is where the West begins, and Dallas is where the East peters out.
Nowadays, there ain’t a spittin difference between ‘em.
EngineerScotty says:

November 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm

Martha Stewart, call your office.
The Fool says:

November 15, 2012 at 2:26 pm

Siempre sera un Texas, pero, en que nacion?

No importa. Viva Cristo Rey!
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

November 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm

In New England baptisms are generally done on infants, and usually not full immersion, so I’m unfamiliar with the protocol. Is a white dress, cake, and dove release common, or is this over the top?
David J. White says:

November 15, 2012 at 3:15 pm

Credit must also be given to whoever coined the term “booboisie”.

Unless I’m mistaken (always a possibility), it was Mencken.

She uses the made-up word “baptee” (= candidate for baptism)

I guess that saves one the trouble of having to learn how to spell (and pronounce) “catechumen”.
James says:

November 15, 2012 at 5:28 pm

“Catechumen” would imply a level of study and depth not immediately seen in this video.
Polichinello says:

November 15, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Is a white dress, cake, and dove release common, or is this over the top?

Over the top. As the OP indicates, this is for people who don’t want to use the church Baptistry.

Along the same lines, I was fishing on a Sunday in Port O’Connor (Yeah, I’m an atheist, so I wasn’t in church), and the local Baptists came out to the pier and Baptized some new congregants. They were Anglo and Mexican (diversity!), so there’s that.

The hymns were nice, if a bit off key. It was a bit odd considering the shark I had caught and released just a few yards away, but they know the area as well as I do, so they know what’s swimming with them, I guess.
Sands says:

November 15, 2012 at 6:10 pm

“The hymns were nice, if a bit off key. It was a bit odd considering the shark I had caught and released just a few yards away, but they know the area as well as I do, so they know what’s swimming with them, I guess.”

Maybe it’s a test of faith like those people who handle snakes in church. Come out of the water without a shark attached to your ass and you’re a true believer.
M_Young says:

November 15, 2012 at 7:25 pm

The only thing missing is a dude with a shotgun — why let some nice doves go to waste?
sjay says:

November 15, 2012 at 10:42 pm

“I guess that saves one the trouble of having to learn how to spell (and pronounce) “catechumen”.”

This very evening, I learned the word ‘baptizand” in
Systematic Theology class.
Bob says:

November 17, 2012 at 11:28 am

Thanks for posting. As someone who grew up in a Reformed mainline background, I’m always interested in the practices of evangelicals.

The notion of “adult baptism” has always struck me as offensive. Don’t sacraments represent God’s unilateral commitment to His people? Or is God just an option on the menu at the fast-food restaurant: If I select Him, I get to don a white dress, eat cake, release birds into the air, and celebrate my self-professed “purity”–a purity that somehow remains undisturbed by the overt narcissism of such an event.

I find it interesting that those who are most ardent in their biblicism are also most prone to pietistic excesses. I know that the PCUSA is far from perfect. But stories like this remind me that I could never fit in culturally among the evangelical crowd.