In the new year, Ryan Walters remains as disappointing and ridiculous as ever

A screen grab from Ryan Walters’ latest in-vehicle video. Though he may look as though he’s falling asleep, he wasn’t. Instead, he appears to have been caught mid-blink. Nothing was altered to capture this picture.

As it is with would-be despots and dictators, it is hard to know what’s deep inside the ridiculous, comical, waste of Lincoln Riley look-alike space that is state superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters.

Harsh?

Too much?

I think not, for what else could somebody be who looks so much like the former Sooner football coach and who decided the best way to react to the terrorist tragedy that struck New Orleans last week, where 15 lives were lost when Shamsud Din Jabbar mowed through middle-of-the-night New Year’s revelers on a French Quarter sidewalk, was to say the real problem was A) the border and B) “schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil.”

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Not that it particularly matters, but if you’re keeping score at home, Din Jabbar, killed by law enforcement returning fire at the scene, was a 42-year-old American citizen and Texan, also a U.S. Army veteran who served his country in Afghanistan.

I originally missed Walters’ Jan. 2 post.

In the fog of New Year’s, a College Football Playoff that’s revealed the SEC to be horribly overrated, a glorious NHL season, the Sooner men and women entering their conference basketball seasons, the Thunder taking over the world and still trying to fully move into one home and sell another, I missed the latest insane in-vehicle video produced by the man who’s title would have you believe he’s involved with education in our state when in fact he’s doing all he can to stand in the way of those actually serious about education in our state.

You know, like a bank-robbing cop, an illiterate English professor or, perhaps, a populist-fueled president-elect who’s already selling out his populist base.

Like that.

Did Walters offer any evidence whatsoever that any schools whatsoever are attempting to turn students against their country in any way whatsoever?

He did not.

Does he ever?

“You have the teachers unions pushing this on our kids. The radical left wants people to hate this country. They’ve completely destroyed the integrity of the FBI by making them more concerned about DEI than about protecting Americans,” Walters said. “It’s a major part of this, and look, this is a real uncomfortable truth … I know the left is going to lose their mind, but listen, we cannot allow our schools to teach our kids to hate this country. We cannot allow our kids to [be taught] that this is an evil country.”

Yeah, and I guess we should do something about banana peels on staircases, too, and street monkeys hurling feces at passersby, not to mention anvils falling from the sky, quicksand on highways and anything else that might be a problem were it actually occurring, though it’s not.

It’s like wherever Walters goes, we’re Chuck Barris, Jaye P. Morgan, Nipsey Russell, Rip Taylor, a few cameras and a studio audience short of The Gong Show.

So what gives?

What’s deep in that wast of space?

Can Walters possibly believe it?

Did he believe it in the first place or did he never but became convinced of some greater good he might serve when people with money came to him to be their vessel?

Or did he never believe it and still doesn’t, but the price of fame and fortune is sometimes public ridicule and, hey, scaring half the folks into believing you isn’t so difficult and that half’s bound to stick with him.

Or did he not believe it in the first place, but like many a fool before him is now convinced of his own own bull$@#% and must remain so to remain relevant now that his whole Trump audition’s failed and he has nowhere else to go?

Of course, he could always attempt the job he’s been elected to perform but what’s the fun in that, when nobody’s picking up your meals and drinks and there’s no green room swag?

“That’s why we’re getting back to the basics here in Oklahoma, to make sure that our kids love this country, understand American values, understand the role that the Constitution, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence played in American history,” Walters said. “Because we want Patriots and that’s going to be the focus of our schools.”

Gee, and the rest of us thought it was reading, writing, math, science, social studies, maybe a foreign language and anything else that promotes critical thinking. To say nothing of patriotism being a choice rather than a commandment, a choice Walters is among the very last to foster.

Like, who’s grooming who?

Soon, I’m sure, there will be moments, reasons and circumstances to address the damage he continues doing specifically.

But today?

Today’s just a reminder, one he offered himself, like a crazy person, speaking at his phone from his vehicle because, one presumes, he couldn’t find a horse.

Ryan Walters is a joke.

He has been from the start.

He makes it up as he goes along.

He’s a relevance junkie.

He’s dynamite on public education only because he wants to blow it up.

All of us are better than he is.

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Hi, it’s Clay. I hope you enjoyed this piece and I hope you found it accurate, necessary, important, cathartic and humorous, too. If it hit on any of those counts, please consider a donation in the form of a paid subscription for just $6/month or $60/year. I have about 1,200 subscribers and 100 paid subscribers, and it’s those paid subscribers that enable me to keep pieces like this in front of paywalls and to keep Oklahoma Columnist going. Also, if, like me, you wish pieces like this to be read by a wider audience, please share it on your social media. As always, thanks for reading.