Of course one of Walters' (and Stitt's) top anti-public education allies was once a fledgling gay porn star
You can’t make it up.
Also, why, why, why, why did I not have this on my bingo card?
What was I (not) thinking?
Look, I hold myself out as a smart guy, able to make sense of things, to call bull$%#& upon things needing bull$%# called upon them, to synthesize what’s happening and rationally get to the bottom of things.
Ergo …
• In world in which Matt Schlapp, still chairman of the American Conservative Union, the driving force behind CPAC, has been accused by three different men of sexual assault, settling with the original accuser for $480,000 …
• In a world in which accusations claiming Matt Gaetz, Republican U.S. House member from Florida, can’t seem to stay away from sex and drug parties involving underage girls just keep coming …
• In a world in which ultra-MAGA Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson called himself a “Black Nazi” and “perv” in the chat room of a pornography website, among many other unsettling posts …
• In a world in which the Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald Trump, has been found civilly liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll and been accused by many more of the same type of acts …
How did I not have A FORMER GAY PORN PERFORMER BEING ONE OF RYAN WALTERS PRIMARY ALLIES in laying waste to public education in Oklahoma?
Wait, what?
That’s right.
Believe it.
The man in the picture atop this story, being looked at intently from the same couch by state superintendent Ryan Walters, also being watched with rapt attention, sitting on another couch from across a coffee table, by governor Kevin Stitt, is anti-woke, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-public education warrior Corey DeAngelis, who went by “Seth Rose” during his porn days and if by any chance you don’t believe me, check out this tweet (and this one, too) from Oklahoma City attorney Cameron Spradling, this story from The Lost Ogle, or just google image search “Seth Rose Porn,” though you might want to be sure your kids have left the room first.
Speaking of The Lost Ogle, it put this photo illustration together atop its story, sort of putting everything into perspective.
Full disclosure, I don’t begrudge DeAngelis his former life.
Any career within the law and not designed to make victims of innocent people is all right with me and if that’s the way he wanted to pay the bills before joining the cabal of insincere, disingenuous, gonna-get-rich-trying education killers that’s so infected the Republican Party in our state and nation, fine.
Also, if you’re Ryan Walters, whose original lie as a want-to-be elected education leader was the (non-) existence of pornography in public school libraries being part of a woke, anti-American indoctrination effort by liberal educators, you bet you’re going to have to deal with DeAngelis, aka Rose, being waved in your hypocritical face.
How big a figure did DeAngelis, who goes by “Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist” on Twitter, become in Oklahoma political circles?
Well, big enough to receive the “Citizenship Award” of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the dueling think tank of the moderate Oklahoma Policy Institute, responsible for helping craft a great deal of conservative policy in the state.
Big enough that, to this day, you can find a tweet from Matt Langston, Walters’ top strategist, posted May 25, with the attached underneath picture and these accompanying words:
“@DeAngelisCorey is boldly fighting against the radical teachers unions and woke indoctrination in the classrooms. His new book, The Parent Revolution, is THE roadmap.”
Big enough that pictures like this one, and the one at the top of this column, grabbed from DeAngelis’ Twitter page, originating April 21, 2022, are not hard to find.
Perhaps big enough, considering he wrote the book on it, that all Walters has really been these last couple of years, is DeAngelis’ avatar.
All these pics of DeAngelis with Stitt, Walters and Langston are not unique.
Pictures can be found of him with Texas governor Greg Abbott, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds or chatting it up with any number of Fox News hosts.
Once, he took a run at being a gay porn star. Now he personifies as anti-woke, anti LGBTQ+, simultaneously doing all he can to run public education into the ground in Oklahoma and everywhere else, too.
I failed to see it coming, but I shouldn’t have.
I should have seen it coming because at every single level of dangerous radical extreme conservatism, you’ll eventually find self-loathing of the highest order at its core as sure as you’ll find bigoted white men claiming to speak for God and self-appointed super patriots, most of them white men, too, who hate a majority of their fellow Americans and are just fine voting for a criminal.
What’s next?
I have some ideas and I’ve amended my bingo card, accordingly.
I won’t be surprised.
Just ready to put the words to it when they hit.
I should have suspected this all along, but like you, Clay, I was too non-judgmental. Of course, this makes total sense and is really disgusting at the same time. Thanks for your great work. Luceen Dunn