The Roundhouse Kick That Binds: A Tribute to Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris was already a folk hero and legend before his passing. Now he’s eternal.
As a Walker, Texas Ranger fan, I’ve never been too keen on the “Chuck Norris facts.” My brother and I grew up watching the last few seasons on TV—Texas Rangers battling flannel-clad heavies who all, inexplicably, knew karate. What’s not to like? Surely we were dealing with an absurdist alternate reality here. I think it was when they had an all-out brawl in a public library that I was hooked.
The 200+ episodes of WTR distilled all his action movie tropes into bite-size moments that spawned the Norris fact phenomenon and gave Conan O’Brien’s writers an easy win with their nightly replaying of the most insane moments from the series.
Self-acknowledged and critically mocked, Chuck’s wooden acting was the linchpin holding the theater of the absurd together. Like Adam West’s Batman before him, Chuck’s seriousness and stoic earnestness created the perfect conditions for camp. We’re talking about a show where every vehicle is an exploding death trap—or an opportunity for Chuck (or his stunt double Kinnie Gibson) to attempt a vehicular transference.* As a Texas Ranger, Walker battles Nazis, the IRA, delivers babies, time travels, witnesses aliens, acts of God, and even encounters the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama!
And he could have left it at that. But somewhere along the line, he began lacing moral issues into the series: racism, AIDS, gang and domestic violence.
He kicked the $#!* out of white supremacists on the regular alongside Clarence Gilyard’s Ranger Trivette. “For me, you know, think about it—growing up in the ’60s and the ’70s. To play a Black cowboy on television and kick people’s butts,” Gilyard recalled.
He showcased the trauma of serving in Vietnam; his brother Wieland died in the war.
He featured friends from his competitive fighting days and employed his family on and off camera.
He spotlit his organization KICK DRUGS OUT OF AMERICA, still going strong today as KICKSTART KIDS.
And yes, this often felt as ham-handedly shoehorned into the show as the product placements for his TOTAL GYM—but Walker, Texas Ranger was his delivery system.
In 2017, Chuck was asked if he had any fans who were Democrats, to which he replied: “I don’t know. The thing with me is, I respect anyone’s opinion. If you have an opinion that’s opposite of mine, that’s fine. I don’t mind. But let’s not take it personally. That’s what really bothers me—when people get very hateful just because I don’t have the same opinion they have. Let’s be human about this and just say, ‘Okay, we agree to disagree.’ That’s what we need to do in this world. The hatefulness that’s going on in our country has got to stop. It’s just not helpful for the future of our country, and it bothers me a lot.”
The fact that my left-leaning, nerdy New England compadres and I have been hosting ROUNDHOUSE ROULETTE, a Walker, Texas Ranger podcast, since 2020 might prove roundhouse kicks are the key to bringing us all together. I certainly don’t agree with all his politics, but I never doubted his sincerity. As we continue to sift through the series, we’re often surprised how often his lessons still ring true three decades later.
After lightly ribbing the Norris family on our podcast for years, in one of the more surreal moments of my life, I found myself singing the Walker, Texas Ranger theme song, “Eyes of the Ranger” (famously sung by Norris himself) into Chuck Norris’ eyes—and survived! He and his family couldn’t have been more gracious.
We all are more alike than we are different.
When begrudgingly pressed to name my favorite Norris fact, I always come back to:
“Chuck Norris makes onions cry.”
Today, he made me cry.
Thank you, Chuck.
May the eyes of the Ranger be upon you.
*Vehicular Transference: Jumping from one mode of transportation to another (e.g., horse to train, biplane to car, helicopter to truck, hot air balloon to hot air balloon).
Adam Dalton is a Nashville-based musician, small business owner, and co-host of Roundhouse Roulette, a Walker, Texas Ranger recap podcast. He performs with the Tennessee Warblers and runs Nashville Recording Supply, an online store specializing in analog tape and supplies for musicians, studios and audio engineers.
