Dan Patrick, Yokel

Nicole Jeffords (2022)

This is a drawing of Texas Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, whose face and performance I have studied for a while. A smiling, winsome guy who was once a radio and television personality and then went into politics. To me, judging by his face, this is a person who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, a smooth talker who claims he is a Christian first, a conservative second, and a Republican third — wow, that says it all.

The face is perennially puffy, gleeful and foolish-looking with a cold, hard gleam of anger and meanness radiating from smallish eyes. Not a stupid man by any means, but, again, a man who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, which makes him dangerous for obvious reasons. Whenever I look at his image, the word I get is “yokel.” His behavior backs up the word. The man seems to have nothing better to focus on than which school bathrooms should be used by trans students (a very big issue with him) and screwing up the trans community with his insistence (along with Paxton and Abbott) that adolescents who take puberty blockers are being abused. Doesn’t he have anything better to do? But then, a small mind focuses on petty things… and that’s what we have with Dan Patrick.