Yesterday afternoon, State Representative Cyndi Roe – a Republican from Lindsay who is married to a man named Vern – sent a mass email to her House colleagues begging forgiveness for publicly revealing how the House voted on SB 364 – a.k.a. the bill that would prohibit school districts from imposing corporal punishment on special needs students.
Although it passed by a solid 63 to 25 margin and the vote is public record, I guess the rural Republicans who voted in favor of protecting scholastic child abuse didn’t want the masses to know about it.
Check this out:
Yikes! I always knew the Oklahoma people were embarrassed and ashamed by the crazy shit our lawmakers vote for, but who knew the lawmakers who vote for the crazy shit were embarrassed by it, too!? I thought they’d be more proud!
I asked around the Ogle Mole Network, and I’m hearing that the lawmaker who was upset by Roe's moment of transparency was Rusty Cornwell.
Rusty is a co-chair of the powerful Rural White Trash Caucus, and – as this photo of “the board” shows – was one of the 20-something lawmakers who voted in favor of protecting a school district’s right to physically harm special ed students.
Yep, whatever you do, folks, do not share that photo that reveals which lawmakers voted to uphold the 2,000-year-old Biblical value of harshly disciplining students with intellectual disabilities for doing something wrong. The last thing we’d want is for voters to be informed and able to identify the true loonies, nuts, and religious zealots that represent us.
That being said, I don’t blame Rusty for being a bit upset. Supporting and enabling state-sanctioned child abuse is the moped of Oklahoma politics – it’s fun to vote for, but you don’t want your friends to see!
Then again, as Scott Fetgatter noted in a reply-all, politicians frequently share vote results on social media.
Fetgatter has a point – if you’re ashamed of your vote, maybe change the vote.
But then again, I don’t even understand why Cornwell would care. The guy is proud of his beliefs, and his vote to support child abuse isn’t even the most embarrassing thing about him on the Internet…
Yep, that’s right. The guy who Wants to Be a Cowboy, Baby with Kid Rock doesn’t want people to know he supports spanking special needs children.
That makes me wonder – if you had to choose between A) listening to Kid Rock’s 1998 album Devil Without a Cause in full while completely sober, or
B) paddling a kid with severe autism because he won’t be quiet in class,
which one would you go with?
For most people, that would be an excruciating and awful decision. But for Rusty, it would probably be a great dilemma – like having to choose between steak and lobster.
Or, for a more appropriate rural Oklahoma Kid Rock fan analogy: hamburger steak or fried catfish.
Anyway, although Rusty and 20-something of his colleagues voted to allow the physical assault of special needs students in Oklahoma classrooms to continue – thanks to literature found in 2,000-year-old ancient religious texts – the good news here is that the bill sailed out of the House and the Senate and is now sitting on Governor Stitt’s desk awaiting signature.
If he signs it and some lawmaker is brave enough to share the news, we’ll let you know.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
