What follows here is the partial text from an email I received from a member of my family who’s planning a visit to Texas, probably in the spring.

“Maybe my ‘knucklehead’ comment came across wrong. Sorry. I don’t think Texas necessarily has proportionately more knuckleheads than anywhere else. They seem to be louder than others though, and they seem to have much more fragile egos. I use as evidence of the latter their excessive vocalizations about how great their state is and how noisily critical they are of those who find Texas’s special wonderfulness, um, dubious. I would like to see whether Austin, the original weird city, is really as nice as people say.”

He had used the term “knucklehead” in an earlier message and he thought I might have been offended by it.

Au contraire. Not at all.

You see, he is right. We do have a lot of them in Texas, although not any more per capita than anywhere else. The difference, the way I see it, is that so many of them occupy high public office and are able to demonstrate their knuckleheadedness to wide audiences. They use those offices with great effectiveness.

Take our governor, who I shall refer to as our knucklehead in chief. Rick Perry has taken his knucklehead notions to a new level. Remember when he kinda/sorta almost endorsed the idea that Texas should secede from the Union, or the time he accused then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke of committing treason because he allowed the printing of money?

No need to mention the “oops” moment. Oh, my. I just did.

He’s likely to be replaced by another knucklehead. Attorney General Greg Abbott is the favorite to become the state’s next governor. I never thought him as a knucklehead, but he’s become one because the state’s GOP-heavy body politic demands it of him. And what about the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick? He’s a hoot — but I ain’t laughin’.

Nope. “Knucklehead” isn’t too strong a word at all.