Oklahomans’ fascination with the television viewing habits of their state school superintendent fizzled last week like a summer romance when the office of Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna announced, “After careful review, it has been determined there is insufficient evidence to file criminal charges.”
That decision had been pending for more than two weeks after the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation had turned over their reports about the mid-July showing of naked women on a television in the office of Superintendent Ryan Walters during the closed-door portion of a Board of Education meeting.
The only board members with a view of the screen, Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage, saw the nudity.
“I was so disturbed by it,” Carson told The Oklahoman. “I was like, ‘What is on your TV?’ I was very stern, like I’d been a mother or a classroom teacher. And I said, ‘What am I watching? Turn it off now!’”
[Turned on, but can’t turn it off? Sounds serious enough for a trip to the ER.]
Deatherage told The Oklahoman Walters immediately stood up and turned it off, never acknowledging or apologizing for what happened.
“I was like, ‘No, wait a minute. Those aren’t naked, surely those aren’t naked women,’” he told The Oklahoman. “I saw them just walking across the screen, … What in the world am I watching?”
NSFW [Not Suitable for Work] is an abbreviation cited by news stories in such situations. Many employers – private and governmental – deem viewing porn on office computers [and on company time, of course] as grounds for immediate dismissal.
Walters later posted, “I have no knowledge of what was on the TV screen during the alleged incident, and there is absolutely no truth to any implication of wrongdoing.”
He also accused Carson and Deatherage of lying about what they saw, and he suggested their claims were a set-up organized by Gov. Kevin Stitt, who appointed them to the board.
Walters’s lying denial of the incident runs counter to the July 28 report in The Oklahoman that “All four appointed board members in the room have said Walters was flustered when Carson called for the television to be turned off because of the images.”
And Murray Evans of The Oklahoman reported last week that Oklahoma County Sheriff Tommie Johnson III “did confirm that the images two state Board of Education members reported seeing were nude scenes from a 1985 Jackie Chan film, The Protector.”
So, the explicit content of the exposed bodies exposes Ryan Walters – as a liar.
Johnson called the incident “purely accidental,” which fails to tell us who chooses the channels in Walters’ office.
KFOR-TV found that “state employment policies strictly prohibit state officials from accessing obscene or sexually explicit material on state devices.
“The policy says failure to comply could ‘lead to disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.’”
Former Board of Education member Tim Gilpin, an attorney, told the OKC TV station: “If this had been a teacher, I’m pretty certain that they would have been immediately suspended and proceedings would have been brought to review it. And then if it turned out to be true, they’d be dismissed.”
And we can imagine the headlines political Christian Walters would have tried to generate – brandishing a Greenwood/Trump Bible – if this had happened in anybody else’s office. He is currently thought-policing state teachers’ social media sites to see if they disagree with his view of the world.
Along with the obvious conclusion that Walters lies first [second and thereafter] to deny unfavorable news, we should take note, too, that DA Behenna is a Democrat. A Republican sheriff presented her evidence that could have led to charges being filed – with the hows and wherefores to be adjudicated in court.
But she did not weaponize her office to score points against a Republican [with his beady eyes on higher offer] – in stark contrast to the way Walters uses his office to badger state educators and Donald Trump wields the power of the entire federal government to punish and threaten those exposing his failures and lies.
