It’s happening again! A conservative Oklahoma politician is spreading lies and misinformation across the Internet to get a stupid point across.
This time around, the culprit isn’t Ryan Walters but Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt.
On Friday, as part of his bizarre ongoing war against our state’s tribal nations, Stitt shared an image on his social media accounts that illustrates the ongoing legal confusion caused by McGirt and how some areas of Oklahoma have different and conflicting speed limits for state highways.
The image has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people:
Holy crap! I know it hasn't always been common for a white guy to write this, but why do the tribes get all the breaks?!?
Seriously, a 100 MPH speed limit?! Sure, that’s about the same speed as the flow of traffic on the Turner Turnpike on a Friday, but that’s awesome. If you ask me, Stitt should use this as an opportunity to reach out to tribes, smoke the proverbial peace pipe, and raise the Oklahoma speed limit to match it. You know, to avoid any confusion and stand in speed solidarity with our Native brothers.
Well, at least that’s what he should do if the image was real. It’s not. It’s just something his campaign team made up.
Via KFOR:
The image posted by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt showing a 100 mph “tribal speed limit” sign was a “meme,” according to the governor’s press secretary.
The image posted on the governor’s official account on Friday shows two speed limit signs—a standard 75 mph speed limit sign and a 100 mph speed limit sign below it reading “tribal speed limit.”
Yep, that’s right. Take your foot off the gas and put on the hazard lights. It’s going to take you a little bit longer to get to the casino. The image isn’t even real. It’s just a heaping pile of fake bull-Stitt whipped up by the Governor’s office to draw attention to some fabricated confusion caused by tribal sovereignty.
Basically, Stitt chose the wrong button:
The KFOR News Hounds caught up with the creator of the meme—Stitt Press Secretary Meyer Siegfried. Aka this guy:
Dear God. Is there any way we can tap into our following and turn this kid into a meme? He looks like a young Tucker Carlson. Whether they were wearing white hoods or just took them off, I bet if you put them in the same room and took a photo, you’d see something like this:
Anyway, here’s what Meyer told KFOR as he tried to mansplain away his attempt to spread misinformation in the dumbest way possible:
The image is a meme. I made it.
It’s a representation of the two systems of justice that are being advocated for by some tribal governments. The governor has posted the meme before during the Hooper v. Tulsa case, which is why that is struck out, and Muscogee Creek v. City of Tulsa is now under it.
The point is there should be one set of rules and an equal justice system under the law. The image begs the question, are there two sets of rules for Oklahomans based on their race?
First of all, that’s not how memes work. They need to have some sort of cultural significance and spread rapidly on the Internet. This is neither. It’s basically just a political prank patched together by a dopey kid who doesn’t know what a meme is.
Also, someone may want to let Meyer knows that tribal citizenship isn’t even based on race! That’s why Kevin Stitt can be a member of the Cherokee Nation despite not having any Cherokee blood!
On that racial note, Meyer then went on to use one of the most cringey, tone-deaf, and obtuse analogies possible to explain why we can’t live in a land with two different sets of rules:
Here’s a hypothetical: Imagine two people are driving on the same road in Tulsa County. Both were caught speeding, but one person is African American and the other is Indian. The two Oklahomans go to different courts and receive different punishments. That is not equal justice.
The meme is a reminder and a warning of the dystopian and un-American justice system to come if tribal governments get their way here.
Our office believes in one set of rules and one set of laws for ALL Oklahomans.
Listen, I get it—Meyer probably wasn’t even allowed to have Black friends growing up. But if he had, he might have learned that many in the Black community feel like they’ve been living in a dystopian and un-American justice system for, oh, a couple of centuries now. A system where traffic stops—and law enforcement in general—are often dictated more by the color of your skin than the speedometer.
It makes you wonder—if Stitt’s office believes in one set of rules and one set of laws for ALL Oklahomans, maybe it’s time they address the injustices that are real, out there, and right in front of them, and not the fabricated ones that require the use of Photoshop to get a pointless point across.
And if he does go the fake meme route, at least use real memes that people can recognize. You know, something like this:
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
