Yeah, you can produce a counter-example list a mile long and I'd agree w/ you -- I complain about it on-list many times myself. But the constant anti-Texas, or just anti-anything-that-isn't-NYC-or-SF-or-Chicago, etc., gets old.
In Dallas, to piss folks off, I would often point out that the city began as a French utopian socialist colony, which it did (thanks, Victor Considerant!), and that one of the "six flags over Texas" was indeed the French flag. This pissed people off, esp. in '03 during the build-up to Iraq War 2. Lucy Parsons, Emma Tenayuca, and plenty of other great lefties have also come from the hated state, and often it's been pointed out Dubya might be as much a Texan as Jeb is a Floridian; he bought his Crawford Ranch in '99, but let's not forget this Yale male cheerleader spent quite a bit of time prepping for world domination in Skull & Bones, too. Robert Johnson did all of his blues recording in TX. (Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson, others, as well.) Austin itself is not some podunk little shit-hole or something.
Although it might be nice if folks were convinced it was, as that might halt the cost of living's steep upward trajectory.
-B.
Carl Remick:
"How could a place like Texas, globally unsurpassed as a hotbed of anti-intellectualism, possibly possess enough school texts to fill a seven-story building as bulky as the Texas Schoolbook Depository?"
Chris Doss:
"See, the books are fifty feet wide. They're from Pecos Bill's library, left over from when he was writing his dissertation (which was really, really big)."
Jordan:
"I remember walking around Austin recently and seeing a huge multi-story building that takes up a whole block. It's the Texas School Retirement System. I thought to myself: shouldn't that just be a computer? *shrug* Everything, it seems, is bigger in Texas."