Where have we heard words like Lincoln Riley's? Around here, pretty much everywhere

I’ll be honest.

I’ve been sitting at this keyboard about 10 minutes trying to create connection between what Lincoln Riley said in his Graham Bensinger interview with “Words,” the first single off Missing Persons first full album, “Spring Session M,” which hit Sound Warehouse and Peaches’ shelves in October of 1982.

If you can’t place the name of the band, the album or the lead singer, Dale Bozzio, I promise you know the song, so maybe click here and listen. 

And so we know what we’re talking about, here are the lyrics to the chorus.

Do you hear me?
Do you care?
Do you hear me?
Do you care?

My lips are moving and the sound's coming out
The words are audible but I have my doubts
That you realize what has been said
You look at me as if you're in a daze
It's like the feeling at the end of the page
When you realize you don't know what you just read

What are words for
When no one listens anymore
What are words for
When no one listens
What are words for
When no one listens
There's no use talking at all

Well, you can see the problem.

Bozzio is singing about not being heard, about the failure to find willing listeners, about, really, struggling to gain agency.

But Lincoln Riley?

Kind of the opposite.

Bozzio’s words are trapped in a vacuum. Meanwhile, Riley has an audience whenever he wants one, yet has nothing accurate to say.

I can’t tell you how much I wanted the sentiment captured on an all-timer 80s classic to be exactly the issue Riley’s foisted upon us. Alas, at best, they are two sides of a similar coin.

Different. Not the same.

So, hope you enjoyed the history lesson … well, actually, here’s a little more:

Dale was married to Terry, Missing Persons’ drummer, who co-wrote “Words” with Warren Cuccurullo. 

Cuccurullo and both Bozzios worked with Frank Zappa prior to forming Missing Persons and Cuccurullo went on to become a 15-year member of Duran Duran, from 1986 to ’01.

Missing Persons lead singer Dale Bozzio on the cover of Spring Session M.

Who knew?

Back to Riley.

It was mostly one answer to one question that had Sooner Nation’s fury turned toward their former coach yet again.

“[I] had a lot of different people trying to break into the house the days after it happened. And 95 percent of the fans and people out there at Oklahoma or anybody else are great. You typically always have that percentage that at times take it too far. Obviously, this was one of those instances.”

As you might expect, media around here stepped in to get the story straight.

Reporting for The Oklahoman, Sooner beat writer Justin Martinez came up with this in a dispatch published online Thursday afternoon.

… according to the Norman Police Department, there were no attempted break-in reports made in the months of November or December 2021. But two service calls were made on Dec. 17 and 19 by someone at the Riley residence, which is located in a gated community off Rock Creek Road and 48th Ave. NW.

The incident report cited “suspicious activity,” and the caller claimed a black Cadillac Escalade kept “driving by (the) house.”

My first thought was this:

Yeah, Riley poured it on a little thick, but he’s not exactly lying. A suspicious car was circling his neighborhood near enough to the announcement he’d be leaving; none of his neighbors were in the news like he was, so decent chance they were trying to unnerve him or his family. Maybe they hoped to break in, who’s to know? Anyway, whether it was truly suspicious or a projection, Riley’s allowed to internalize what he wants to internalize, so whatever, no harm, no foul, let’s all get back to our lives.

Then I did something else.

I read Riley’s words more closely.

They’re so premeditated.

They’re so performative.

It’s like he took what actually happened, decided how far he could spin it into a believably harrowing tale and, upon doing that, decided how much further he could take it and have it be believed by enough people that he wrings out every bit of sympathy he possibly can because Lincoln Riley’s all about Lincoln Riley, pretty much all day, every day.

So let’s break it down.

“[I] had a lot of different people trying to break into the house the days after it happened.

Even the way he phrased it is weird.

He HAD a lot of different people?

Strange.

Also, two huge exaggerations.

How would he know it was “a lot of different people.” Did he count? Was he right there letting it happen? He was probably in Los Angeles or on the recruiting trail, not Norman, given he took the job on Nov. 28, one day after Bedlam, and the days calls were made to police from his Norman home were almost three weeks later … which even for an hyperbole artist is quite a bit later than “the days after it happened.”

And 95 percent of the fans and people out there at Oklahoma or anybody else are great. You typically always have that percentage that at times take it too far. Obviously, this was one of those instances.”

Huh.

Most people expressing that sentiment would say 99 percent or 99.9 percent, because hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of Oklahomans count themselves Sooner fans and how many folks did Riley disingenuously project to have attempted to break into his home?

Ten?

Yet here he is picking a number that’s literally 1 in 20, 5 in 100, 50 in 1,000, 5,000 in 100,000 and 25,000 in 500,000. Does he really believe that? No, he can’t possibly, but what he can do is exaggerate wildly for his own purposes.

It’s a tell.

It’s the tell of an ultimately unserious, self-serving person who believes in nothing greater than the lies he tells himself about himself because no star shines brighter than himself.

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Curious, but who else might that apply to?

Kevin Stitt keeps telling us this:

“I will not let Eastern Oklahoma become a reservation,” he’s said.

Yet, nobody believes that could really happen consistent with Stitt’s fear-mongering. Nobody. It’s a red herring. It’s insincere. Yet he keeps saying it because it serves him to say it, even as he does not believe it.

Ryan Walters would have you believe that in an overwhelmingly Republican state, in which all levers of power are controlled by Republicans who can’t possibly be crazy enough to lose a general election — he got elected, after all — it’s actual left-wing subversives who must be feared, indoctrinating children in our public schools.

It can’t possible be true. Have you seen our state? Even Walters doesn’t believe it.

What he believes is he can scare people into believing it and use that fear to do his own indoctrinating, a fact that became entirely too clear when he invited PragerU into Oklahoma’s public schools.

Take a look at Prager U’s educational selections and tell me who’s doing the indoctrinating.

The same is true when Walters comes after trans students as if they’re an invading force when nowhere in the state has that been the case.

Or when he randomly inflated the numbers of fraudulent vendor contracts associated with an indicted former Tulsa Schools employee from $364,000 to “over $1 million” for the sole purpose of gathering greater public support while threatening the very existence of the state’s largest school district.

If it helps, call it “The Ryan Test.”

Because we have no problem spotting the falsities of an in-it-for-himself West Coast football coach we once believed in here, yet struggle to spot the same bullshit delivered by our political leaders who traffic in demagoguery and lies with far higher stakes and consequences.

Lincoln Riley’s not fooling anybody.

Others should not be fooling us either.