When one little lie is so much, and why Ryan Walters must be monitored
When one little lie is so much, and why Ryan Walters must be monitored
Oklahoma Columnist, this thing I’ve created since leaving daily newspapering, mostly deals with sports and government. Or, if you prefer, sports and politics.
So much of that government or politics revolves around state superintendent Ryan Walters, who’s never at a loss when it comes to embarrassing himself, his state and, when he can pull it off, the entire public education infrastructure he appears hell-bent on destroying.
That alone — threatening Tulsa Public Schools with losing accreditation; questioning the worthiness of Oklahoma’s universities; pushing rules requiring teachers to spy on their students; claiming he wouldn’t be intimidated by a “woke mob” in the wake of Nex Benedict’s death before offering any sympathy in the wake of Nex Benedict’s death; chasing masses of state department of education employees out of their jobs, thus limiting all the good the OSDE’s charged with doing despite his horrendous leadership; advocating for a public Catholic school that would effectively end the separation of church and state in Oklahoma and the nation — is enough to righteously (and factually) pillory the small, fragile, corrupt man Walters is, for the stakes are too high should win the culture war he’s waging.
The problem?
It’s an exercise in diminishing returns.
Ryan Walters said …
Yeah, yeah, who cares.
Ryan Walters proposed …
I know, he’s crazy, who cares.
Ryan Walters used state money to …
What did you expect hm to do, who cares.
See what I mean?
Then you go back and find a nugget you missed while paying attention to Sooner softball, the Thunder, whatever, and you’re like, I have to write about this, people need to know about this.
So here we are.
It was April 25th when the superb Murray Evans, education reporter at The Oklahoman, reported a story under the headline “Ryan Walters says he’s fired 130 people, but public documents say otherwise.”
Jesus.
He’s a horrible human being.
So “see through” he defeats the term, because there’s nothing to see through.
He’s just a lying liar getting caught telling lies. Even his lack of effort is offensive, because he’s just making shit up as he goes along.
Anyway, here it is.
Two Thursdays ago Walters took questions following a regular monthly meeting of the state education board in which, responding to a question about possibly losing federal funding over his stance against the U.S. Department of Education’s new Title IX guidelines, he blurted “We have saved taxpayers a tremendous amount of money by firing 130 staffers.”
God, you’ve got to love it.
Or be so enraged by it you want to go all Keith Moon on a hotel room.
The background, as you may know, is this:
Back on April 11th, Evans reported 65 OSDE employees had “left their jobs … since July,” raising the agency’s exodus count to more than 130 since Walters took office; thoroughly embarrassing Walters, the minions he runs (or do they run him?) and, really, the entire state legislature empowered to oversee him and the department.
So embarrassed, agency spokesman Dan Isett called The Oklahoman “fake news” and Walters, via Twitter, called it the “Jokelahoman” and a “fake newspaper.”
Then our jokelagovernor, Kevin Stitt, got involved, addressing the OSDE exodus with this flippant quote that surely pleased him enormously.
“So you’re telling me we’ve lost 130 bureaucrats up here in Oklahoma City and we’ve still got our education system rolling across the state?” he said. “Sounds like a good thing to me.”
Which teed Walters up.
If the governor was willing to offer political cover following the worst news drop of Walters’ political life, of course Walters could take it, run with it, and start making it up as he goes along.
Evans referenced several resignation letters in his original bombshell story, letters not typically written when somebody’s fired.
In the story following the OSDE meeting, Evans reported Walters was then asked if he’d fired Bryan Cleveland and Andy Ferguson, the OSDE’s top two attorneys, or Jenna Thomas, who’d been chief of staff, all three of whom’s exits had been widely reported as resignations, not firings.
“I’m not going to go into individual circumstances,” Walters said. “But I am going to say I am very proud to cut this agency down dramatically from a bloated bureaucracy …” blah, blah, blah.
It’s so elemental.
Of course they weren’t fired.
Had they been, Walters would have been yapping about it at the time. If any had been, he would have been yapping about it at the time. Had they been, he wouldn’t have come up with the very same number The Oklahoman came up with: [more than] 130.
Had they really been firings, Walters would have been going after The Oklahoman for getting the story wrong rather than calling it names, presenting documents or witnesses to prove the story was wrong, quite possibly threatening to sue.
He did none of that.
He did none of that because he was caught, embarrassed and worried for his political future.
Then full-of-Stitt handed him a lifeline and there Walters went, choosing to take what he’d lied about a little and jump the shark with a casually offered whopper.
Just like his political hero, facing felony criminal charges for falsifying business records to cover up paying off a porn star to keep a sexual encounter secret in the name of attaining the presidency (and many other charges on many more fronts, too), Walters has become a day trader with the truth.
It’s a lie of little import, for it doesn’t really matter how the exodus occurred, only that Oklahoma students are not being served.
It’s a lie of utter magnificence and horror, because it’s so brazen and unnecessary, signifying he’ll lie about anything and everything at any time in front of any audience.
Not even his fellow Republicans can believe anything he tells them.
They should get rid of him.
They should investigate and impeach … yeah, yeah, I know, he’s crazy, who cares.
Still, the truth must be told about Ryan Walters.