Leslie Osborn, you Ignorant ….
No, we aren't being anything other than sarcastic and playing off the much loved Dan Ackroyd/Jane Curtin skit on Saturday Night Live circa 1979. For the younger readers there was a new format of TV shows going on, William F. Buckley debating some liberal and what was new and unique about it was that both did the best they could to destroy the other and ridicule their arguments. SNL conceived a Point-Counter Point segment, with a woman news anchor played by Jane, who gave a liberal speech about one side of a debate which was almost always a debate on an innocuous subject like a celebrity couple divorce, with Dan Ackroyd responding for the other side and always beginning with "Jane, you ignorant slut." Pure over kill, purely vicious, and so unthinkable at the time that it was a huge favorite with the audiences.
The joke of course was to do the unthinkable in destroying, nay, incinerating Jane with a withering response, making anyone that thought to seriously think her reply was reasonable to recoil in horror, as if respecting what she said would itself be the ultimate travesty and betrayal of reason and civility. Instead of saying she was a prostitute hiring out her opinion to the highest bidder Ackroyd used the word slut, insinuating that Jane wasn't doing it for the money but for the sheer joy of doing the job to the point that being paid was irrelevant. As in "You don't do this for money, you do this because you like it."
But the tag line "Jane you ignorant slut" became a tag line in pop culture and a way of calling someone out for over the top claims so it was natural to think of that line after Rep. Leslie Osborn sent out a press release asking for " Fellow Republicans for Return to Civility in Discourse". This was of course a thinly veiled attack on Rep. John Bennett for calling out Mary Fallin and the state agency heads that she controls trying to blackmail the legislature into tax increases. Here is what Osborn excreted:
"In the last few months, members of my political party and caucus have called women "hosts," suggested Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) pluck children from schools to save taxpayer dollars in education, and now have called our hard-working, underpaid state employees terrorists. These are the same people who protect our foster children, keep our streets safe, educate our children, prosecute criminals and treat the mentally ill. No one has addressed or apologized for these statements that do not represent our body as a whole. In special session we have heard the impending tales of horror to come due to lack of state funding; the mentally ill's loss of services, closure of rural hospitals and nursing homes, and the end of programs to assist the developmentally disadvantaged. However, we refuse real bipartisan solutions to properly fund core services. I am embarrassed to be a part of these failures; it's not what I ran on or signed up for. Today I hope that Republican's across the state will stand together and say enough. That they will rally to the call of Pres. George W. Bush to be compassionate conservatives. That they will cry out for civil discourse and legislators that work across the aisle and rotunda with honest conversation instead of shenanigans, name calling and political gamesmanship. Please hold us accountable, expect more, demand more....our state deserves better."
And here is our reply, in the spirit of SNL:
Leslie, you ignorant slut.
First lets talk about you getting sacked (no Dan Kirby wasn't involved this time and for a change your pants weren't down around your ankles) as the A & B Chairman last session because you couldn't control your sharp tongue and attacked the legislature and the GOP in general in news interviews. And were ICE to start picking up illegal alien families en masse it would lead to a 53% decrease in the number of students in Oklahoma City alone, fixing the education funding crisis in a few short weeks. So would end the so called "teacher shortage" as you would have a huge number of teachers competing for fewer available jobs. And John Bennett DID NOT call state employees terrorists, he called the agency heads and Fallin terrorists. Have you apologized for lying about this?
Have you apologized for your dismal 7.5 ranking on the RINO Index? Or explained to your voters that the only reason your scored that high was that you missed three votes? And got every other vote WRONG according to the current GOP Party Platform? Not only that, you perpetuated the lies that these state agencies used to blackmail the legislature and advocated for billions in new taxes or tax increases. Are you embarrassed to call yourself a Republican when you defecate on the Party Platform and the general views of the voters that elected you?
Worse, in the week where we saw a state agency head, a veteran of three administrations, resign after getting caught cooking the books with millions and millions of dollars unaccounted for you dare to say we don't need to look at waste and corruption? And how about the other two agencies in trouble, Commerce and the Dept of Agriculture?
Civil discourse is needed? For you yes because it protects you from being publicly called a liar and an aging wrinkled hypocrite that ruined her marriage and rumor has it ruined former Rep. Dan Kirby's marriage while you were at it. Civil discourse is always the haven of the corrupt and the crooks such as yourself. How is that for honesty and holding you accountable.
