POLITICS GOODBYE TO KING RUCK

City Council member Jerry Rucker is leaving office, and the press will miss him. The most colorful local pol since Max Gold-blatt, Rucker was a gusher of quotes on everything under the sun. He was politically hard to pigeonhole, and some of his colleagues said he didn’t do his homework, but he understood the media. “I think,” said His Mouthness, “there’s a tendency on the part of the press to pick up on the trivial and put that on page one.” You got that right, Jer, and here are some of your bon mots to prove it:



On Al Lipscomb:

“[He’s like] an autistic child who hasn’t hit a lick in twenty-five years and suddenly stands up and does a moon for everybody as soon as the camera comes on,”



On Diane Ragsdale:

“She has a disputatious, vicious, venomous personality.”



On using animals for medical research:

“It’s either a matter of experimenting on Fido or experimenting on Grandma.”



On the Far North Dallas developers:

“A lot of people who live geographically and mentally closer to Southern California than to Dallas.”



On the city’s no-smoking ordinance:

“I hate to legislate rudeness, or legislate against it. Manners are something people get to take their own retribution against.”

On political self-restraint:

“Probably the only thing I’ve learned in this whole [City Council] thing is to hold your fire, because if you lambaste something every week, you just become a screwball.”



On the Starplex Amphitheatre:

“Dallas is about to lose its virginity in terms of big-time crime.”



On the Citizens Council:

“Well, the fact is it just presented fewer behinds to kiss, and I never did particularly like it much, and so I never did get a lot of attention from them.”



On forming coalitions:

“I will not surrender judgment. I’m absolutely sovereign as to what I do or say. I will not make an excuse that somebody else told me to do it. Anybody who says that shouldn’t be in public office.”



On power in Dallas:

“How are you going to get your name known in Dallas unless you got a million bucks or you married someone’s daughter who’s got a million bucks? You can’t. You to got to sneak up on them tike I did.”