WYO legislators say the darndest things

Are you old enough to remember Art Linkletter’s book “Kids Say the Darndest Things”?  Mr. Linkletter wasn’t around long enough to listen to Wyoming’s legislators and lobbyists who say whatever it takes to influence votes. The difference between them and Linkletter’s children is that when these adults say “the darndest things,” we get laws, not laughter.

The most memorable quotes of the recent legislative session came from fundamentalist Christians who can’t distinguish the pulpit of their church from the podium on the floor of the state legislature.  

Discussing abortion rights, several legislators avoided the Constitution altogether, citing instead their personal religious beliefs and dragged Jesus into the debate.

As a prelude to his vote setting women’s rights back 50 years, Campbell County Representative Roy Edwards went public with a private conversation held 20 years ago. He claims the woman was “wracked with guilt” about an abortion she had as a teenager until “she accepted Jesus as her savior.”

Debating the death penalty, Rep. Rev. Scott Clem, another Gillette Republican, offered a rather odd, rather anti-conservative, interpretation of a Bible verse in support of his vote to retain the death penalty. Overlooking that time when God said in perfect Hebrew, “Vengeance is mine,” Clem preached, “God ordained the government and gave it the power of retribution.”

The Senate debate was dignified until two Laramie County legislators stood. Using a complete non sequitur Anthony Bouchard warned repeal would make us like California where, he said,  inmates receive taxpayer-funded gender-reassignment surgery. That has nothing to do with capital punishment. However, it did give Bouchard a chance to take a gratuitous cheap-shot at Transgender folks.  

Senator Lynn Hutchings is exceedingly prolific when it comes to saying the darndest things. Everyone is familiar with her assertion that protecting LGBTQ folks from discrimination is like approving sex with children, and dogs.

Opposing the repeal of the death penalty, Hutchings sermonized that “the greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty.” If he had not been executed, there would be “no hope” for the rest of us. The implication was that, despite his innocence, the government could still execute Jesus. So, why not other innocent folks?

Jesus would have rolled over in his tomb if he’d still been there.

Some actions spoke louder than words. That’s often the case in politics. About LGBT human beings, Pope Francis proclaimed, “You can’t marginalize these people.” However, in a display of unity not seen since before the Reformation, Wyoming’s Catholic leadership colluded with extremist Protestants branding themselves “the Wyoming Pastor’s Network,” to euthanize the anti-discrimination bill and marginalize gays, lesbians, transgender and bisexual citizens.

The aforementioned Representative Edwards conjured a scenario where females could be hired and then, to use his word, “flip” their gender, become men, and sue the pants off of the unsuspecting boss.

“Brother Love’s Travelin’ Salvation Show” starred a self-identified woman proclaiming herself an “ex-queer.” Just like turning water into wine, “poof,” this lesbian proclaims she became straight. Hallelujah. Once, she told lawmakers, she did things she won’t talk about. Now, she does things we don’t want to hear about. Verily she saith unto you, LGBTQ people are mentally-ill pretenders, undeserving of non-discrimination protection.

Republican Party leaders are convinced Mark Gordon used Democratic votes to rob Foster Friess of the governorship. They employed heavy-handed tactics trying to pass a bill preventing non-Republicans from voting in GOP primaries. Albany County senator Glenn Moniz bravely asserted, “I was elected by my constituents in Albany County to represent them. I do not succumb to intimidation or threats by anybody.” Moniz then succumbed to his party’s threats and voted for their bill.  

Eli Bebout, a senator representing no one but himself, sponsored legislation reducing his own severance taxes. He said corporate welfare was necessary given falling oil prices. However, Bebout supported elimination of funding for cervical and breast cancer monitoring. There are times, he reasoned, when responsible legislators must simply say no.

Darned legislators say the darndest things. Darned voters elect the darndest legislators.

Vincent Price & John Barrasso are soul brothers

Millennials won’t get this. That’s why we have Google. So, Google “Vincent Price.” Look at that photo. He could be John Barrasso’s brother. Right? They are certainly soul brothers, known for the same act, i.e. trying to scare the bejeezus out of people. Price’s performance ended when he died in 1993. For Republicans, Barrasso’ s act never gets old. And it didn’t start with Barrasso. It’s a Wyoming tradition as old as the hills.

Price once compared “horror-show actors” with “method actors” like Barrasso. The former make the unbelievable believable, he said, while the latter make the believable unbelievable. The GOP is betting Price has it backwards. It’s a bet they’ve cashed in on before.

In 1958, Wyoming Republicans knew incumbent U.S. Senator Frank Barrett was in trouble. The longer that campaign went, the more ground he lost to an egg-head history  professor from the University of Wyoming. They started a whisper campaign. Gale McGee, the whisper went, is a pinko, a Communist sympathizer.

It didn’t work in 1958, but they had good reason to think it would. It wasn’t the first time Wyoming Republicans tried that ruse. The Red Scare was their “go to” strategy for years.

In 1950, John Clark was Wyoming’s Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives. He ran against Republican incumbent William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s entire campaign revolved around unfounded that the Democrats were sacrificing American interests in their sympathy toward Communism. The otherwise unbelievable charges were made believable because they were repeated so often.

Harrison won. In his concession speech, Clark said he hoped the day would come when Wyoming Republicans “actually ran an entire campaign on a level of intelligent discussion instead of hysterical name calling.” It hasn’t.

In 1952, the ultimate demagogue, Joseph McCarthy, came to campaign against incumbent Democrat, Joseph O’Mahoney. McCarthy warned that O’Mahoney was a member of the “Commmi-crat” Party. It worked again. The longtime incumbent was ousted in favor of Frank Barrett whose effort to replicate that blueprint against Gale McGee failed six years hence.

With the diminishing impact of the word “Communist,” the Republicans relied on the “L” word. As conservative as Wyoming Democrats have always been, the word “liberal” caused Republicans to cower in fear. Fear has never lost its power to motivate these frightened folks.

Jump forward to the 2020 political campaign. The Republican Party’s main obligation now is to cover up the crimes of a President who colluded with the Russians. Any attempt to connect a Democrat to the Russians would be too obviously hypocritical and polls show more than half of all Republican voters have joined the Vladimir Putin Fan Club under Trump’s guidance.

With the “Democrats-are-commies” charge neutralized, what’s the Party of Perpetrated Fear to do? “Ah ha,” said the pollsters, “We have a new approach.” It depends on a Lassie-like faithfulness in the gullibility of the base. They're like Mikey of the old cereal commercial? “Give it to Mikey. Mikey will eat anything.” So will the GOP faithful.

That’s where Vincent Price’s soul brother arrives on stage. Using his best Vincent Price imitation, Senator John Barrasso recently did a cold read of the new GOP script, sending shivers down the trembling spines of his gullible base. “Boo,” he shouted as he warns, “The Green New Deal is a socialist manifesto, the first step down a dark path to socialism.”

What he’s really saying is, “We know how to manipulate you.”

When it appears Americans are finally having the critical debate about whether healthcare is a right or a privilege, the GOP needs to distract voters.  Barrasso and Trump don’t want the 2020 campaign to be about whether the grossly-wealthy should pay more taxes or whether climate-change science matters.

Republicans lurk in the dark places until a voter passes. Then they cry out, “Want to see something really scary? Don’t look at what America could be. Look instead at what we claim Venezuela has become.”

It is no coincidence Halloween comes just before an election.

America's problem? Fox News and talk radio

Spring is here and the boys of summer are undergoing the ritual of spring training. See this old, yellowed newspaper clipping? Not sure why I kept it all these years. It’s about Al Worthington, a pitcher whose career started in 1953 with the New York Giants. He played for half a dozen teams and was considered the Twins’ first great closer.

In 1960, Worthington was traded to the White Sox after complaining his team was breaking rules by stealing the other teams’ signs. There, he witnessed an elaborate scheme. Chicago’s pitching coach hid in the outfield scoreboard where he could see catchers signal opposing pitchers.

Using scoreboard lights, he signaled batters. Blinking lights meant a breaking ball. A solid light forecasted fastballs. The practice was illegal and too much for the deeply principled Worthington. He threatened to quit if that “unethical” behavior continued.

Worthington pitched only four more games before the Sox demoted him to the minors. He had brief stays in Cincinnati and Minnesota before his “all-too-honest” baseball career ended.

Baseball is just a game. Don’t you wish those politicians who play games with our lives would be as honest as Al Worthington? His story sounds odd today. The nation’s foundational myth tells of a young George Washington, who, when asked who chopped down his father’s favorite cherry tree, confessed, “I cannot tell a lie.” It too sounds odd by today’s standards.

Wouldn’t America be great again if its leaders reacted to dishonesty in government the way Al Worthington did in baseball?  Wouldn’t it be better if members of his own party would put the country ahead of a President who says, “Well, I try. I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth.”

Clearly, the truth isn’t all it was once cracked up to be. There was a time when we the people could agree on facts even when they led us to different opinions. Jesus’s timeless question, “What is truth,” has become complicated. Jesus may have assumed the ultimate goal of thoughtful people was to find truth.

“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” is just some of that old-time religion that is not good enough for a lot of folks anymore.

It started with the 24/7 news cycle. Prior to that development, trustworthy newscasters like Cronkite, Murrow, Huntley and Brinkley were allotted just thirty minutes each evening to give us the facts. We trusted them and used those facts to develop our opinions, to decide how to vote.

Then in 1980, CNN became the first network to give us the news 24 hours a day. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes didn’t like the way CNN reported the news. They built a conservative competitor, Fox. Radio stations found they could make more money if rock and roll disc jockeys were replaced with talk radio dominated by prevaricators like Rush Limbaugh and felons like Gordon Liddy and Oliver North.

Some blame FOX, others MSNBC. One thing is true. Neither can fill 24 hours with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and keep people watching. Networks are built around the willingness of talking heads to spend hours saying anything. Half-baked opinions and falsehoods pass for facts. Facts are increasingly unimportant, inconvenient science ignored and denigrated, history revised, statistics and data disregarded.

The more outrageous guests are willing to be, the more often they are invited back.

Unlike Al Worthington who once sacrificed a major league baseball career to the truth, careers are now enhanced by not telling it. The truth is a relic, a part of museum displays of what our country once was.

No one needs to steal signals anymore. Each side hires its own umpires. Strikes can be called balls, balls can be called strikes. Whatever one’s own team needs at the moment is upheld as an alternative to what was once considered the truth. Alternative facts form alternative universes. We each go off to live in our own.