My buddy Travis (who has a new novel called Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder out now, and a fancy new piece on Book Notes at the Largehearted Boy blog) made a silly, offhand statement on Twitter. It read: “I think we should all also boycott Arizona Iced Tea because it is the drink of fascists.” He was kidding. What happened next is not entirely easy to follow, timeline-wise. Travis—as you will read in the following interview—believes the quote was grabbed by someone on a forum. Most of the links I’ve found by looking up “Travis Nichols” and “Drink of fascists” seem to lead back to an article on the NY Daily News site written by a Helen Kennedy. Hard to say where she first saw it. (I was considering trying to get ahold of Ms. Kennedy, but on Thursdays I pretend to be a cowboy, not a journalist.)

Then Rush Limbaugh found it. And then so did some other people. Hilarity ensued.

A reporter from the New York Times actually contacted Travis, and wrote about the little dust up here.

I interviewed Travis. It’s after the jump.
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