BOOKS

...BOOKS There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Dead Talk-Show Hosts and No Skid Marks Here's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos byJimHightower HarperCollins...

...Humor is a funny thing...

...Young Jim misrepresented this as a prairie-populist call-to-arms and not simply the kind of truism parents are always coming up with...

...A humorist can get away with not being funny (after all, he's not a comedian) if he gives you pause or makes you clear your throat in a meaningful way...

...Jim Hightower, being self-effacing, most often quotes other guys who say something funny you can't remember but he can, and does so repeatedly...

...By Michael Feldman Here in Wisconsin, just a half-hour drive from Madison (former radical campus and current hotbed of student rest), lies Baraboo, home of the Crane Foundation, dedicated to the rescue and promulgation of endangered species of cranes...

...Jim Hightower is from Texas where, if you're not colorful at an early age (you know the drill: "as hot as_," "tougher than a_," "about as useful as a_"), they'll stuff you into the sack with the superfluous barn cats and down the well you'll go...

...292 pages...

...Since you are, after all, reading The Progressive, I think we can safely agree his heart's in the left place, but at the same time Hightower reminds me of those three guys who dress up in cowboy duds and sing Gene Autry songs even though you know they have Phi Beta Kappa keys that jingle jangle jingle...

...in to perform the mating dance...

...I sure hope she doesn't base her life on this...

...the next generation of progressive Hightowers may well begin their anecdotes, "As my two daddies used to say...

...Hightower, although he's no Minnie Pearl, can do that...

...I'm not a violent man, but I hope if I ever get my ass kicked it's by Jim Hightower since, unless he kicks with those pointy silver-toed boots they favor down there, I know I'm going to walk away...

...Governor Bush escaped this childhood fate for the same reason Saddam Hussein is still feasting on frozen Kuwaiti zoo ibex: His father is really from Maine...

...Just yesterday I told my six-year-old, "I don't like doing some things either, but I do them...

...For example, although you can't tell how he comes down on the subject, he has a section called "Penises" (between "Parking Meters" and "Peppers") and refers early and often to cajones (which are edible in Texas), as well as "kicking ass...

...As a humorist, Hightower falls somewhere between Garrison Keillor and Woody Guthrie, had he never picked up a guitar...

...Still there's a certain thrill in being swaggered at by a leftist...

...If, as rumored, the Crane Foundation is soon to be taken over by The Progressive to preserve and multiply the endangered Siberian Leftist, Jim Hightower will undoubtedly be called Michael Feldman is the executive producer and host of Public Radio International's "Whad'ya Know...

...So, too, with his subject matter: Clinton, Gingrich, the late, lamented Democratic Party, corporate polluters, and Butterball turkeys...

...23.00...

...While extinction looms as a real possibility, his performance will be mildly amusing and full of down-home barnyard references, not unlike his new book, There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos...

...Hopefully...

...Jim's daddy started Little League in Denison, and believed that "everybody does better when everybody does better...

...If Maria Shriver ever induces Arnold Schwarzenegger to come over to our side, there may some day be something behind it...

...He dares to be daring, but the cutting edge on the hoe needs sharpening...

...Since cranes, like so many of us, have trouble breeding in captivity, a volunteer at the Foundation flaps his arms, wiggles his ears, and flies into a passable imitation of a male in display to get the female—who must think she has now seen it all—to go into estrus...

...Hightower's father was the real thing, though, a certifiable Texan, as revealed in the chapter "Daddy's Philosophy" (a Texan refers to his "daddy" all his life...

...He's a Will Rogers who's met a lot of guys he didn't like...

...All of them live to fight another day...

...Of course, I've been called a humorist myself, and am well aware of its pejorative tinge, much like the term "talent" in a contract...

...A humorist is someone who says funny things, but you never can remember them...