Kinky Friedman, The Prisoner of Vandam Street

Long before Queer Nation and Niggaz With Attitude adopted the slurs of their oppressors as a show of unapologetic might, seventies country band Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys were giving us Yid Kids up north proof that the goyim were more than people to give your lunch money to. Authentic country, the Texas Jewboys sang that when necessary, some lantsman needed to take out a good old can of kosher whip-ass against the Christers—Kinky’s signature song, “Asshole From El Paso,” was written in response to “Okie from Muskogee,” that noxious paean to redneckism sung by the no doubt foreskin-bearing Merle Haggard. Later the Kinkstah began writing best-selling mystery novels featuring a Lone Star-stater private eye named Kinky Friedman fighting crime and injustice in Gotham. His merry band of pranksters serve as Dr. Watsons for the cigar-chomping, whiskey-swilling shamus. The Texas Jewboy calls upon all his self-dubbed “Village Irregulars” in his just-out, just-great The Prisoner of Vandam Street, in which Kinky is mysteriously stricken with malaria in the heart of Greenwich Village.