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Lawmaker flusters Ryan Walters with question about TLO article…

2:36 PM EST on February 2, 2023

Although I’ve been covering the education beat like Ryan Walters monitoring a kid’s bathroom, I swear on a box of kitty litter that I’m not trying to turn this website into an unabashed public education watchdog blog.

It’s just that I find it extremely fascinating that Oklahoma’s public education system is now being run by religious rednecks who want to dismantle public education and turn it into a private enterprise system, and think it’s something people should know about.  

Plus, we stumble across weird things that make for great articles like, you know, Ogle Moles leaking internal Dept of Ed. emails to us, Ryan Walters commanding his HR director to email threats to those Moles, those Moles sharing those threats with us, and then Oklahoma lawmakers asking a perturbed Ryan Walters about the fiasco during a joint legislative budget hearing!

Check this out! Walters was obviously perturbed by the question, which explains why he does a double Max Headroom head jerk after answering it...

First of all, I would like to commend Representative Fugate for continuing the fine Oklahoma establishment tradition of not acknowledging The Lost Ogle by name when referencing our content. The last thing we need is to be treated with dignity and respect, otherwise, people will treat us too seriously! 

Sure, it would have been nice if he would have referred to us as an “obscure local social blog” as opposed to “an online publication – at the very least, it may have got that blonde woman in the plaid turtleneck in the back to pay attention and stop playing with her phone and hair – but we appreciate the fact that he at least reads our content, and used it to throw Ryan Walters completely off guard during a legislative meeting. 

Seriously this was awesome!

Until that question, Ryan was kind of cool and collected during the line of questioning, but based on the head jerk and terse response, you can tell it threw him more off guard than a lobbyist sending Harbour Mountain Coffee House over to cater a Department of Education luncheon!

All that being said, although we appreciate Representative Fugate using a TLO article as an opportunity to alert Department of Education employees that they can still be whistleblowers, I’d still caution employees to tread carefully when sharing information with lawmakers. These people are about as trustworthy as Swadley’s BBQ. You’re much better off sharing that stuff with “online publications” so we can have fun with it first.

Anyway, there’s some more stuff being reported today by the mainstream media about the coordinated efforts of right-wing grifters and special interest groups to take over public education in Oklahoma that I may cover tomorrow. 

Until then, stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.

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