EDITORIALS : Let’s spread a rumor
Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008
AS A legislator, Jon Woods (
RPhobia ) makes a heckuva
gossip. The freshman representative from Springdale was at it again the other day, namely bashing illegal immigrants. That’s been his shtick since going to the Ledge. This time he was talking up a proposal supported by a group called Secure Arkansas. Its purpose: to limit who can receive public benefits in Arkansas.
What benefits ? To name one, in-state tuition for kids who have gone through the public schools in Arkansas and are bright enough to go to college, but aren’t U. S. citizens because their parents brought them here illegally. It’s the kind of mean-spirited and self-defeating idea that appeals to certain voters—the same ones Jon Woods has courted during his short legislative career.
This time he went even further than usual. In declaiming against the criminal element he sees at the root of problems with immigration, Mr. Woods said killings ordered by gang members in Springdale and Rogers had been carried out outside of Arkansas. The gasps of horror from his audience must have been just what he was hoping to produce. The man loves to give voters a good scare, and here he was exposing Gang Central right here in Northwest Arkansas !
There just one problem with Representative Woods’ story: It didn’t happen.
When asked later where he got his information, Jon Woods suddenly wasn’t as sure of himself as he sounded behind the speaker’s stand. He said Kelley Cradduck, the former candidate for sheriff and Rogers cop who’s considered an expert on gangs, told him something along those lines. Nope, said Sergeant Cradduck. He doesn’t know anything about hits ordered from Northwest Arkansas.
By then, Representative Woods was doing what any teller of tall tales does when challenged. He said he wasn’t responsible for the details. He was just passing along something he really knew nothing about. Or as he put it, more tactfully, he was discussing something “outside of my expertise.... I don’t have all the information.”
No kidding.
But a made-up story can make for a better speech especially when the story reinforces the fears of the audience. This story sure did. In this age of instant communication, we expect Jon Woods’ story will soon be making the rounds of the coffee shops, barber shops, and certainly the Internet. It will doubtless pass for the truth in the more gullible parts of the blogosphere. It’s also likely to last nigh unto forever in the more credulous zones of cyberspace, if not on the tongues of the kind of folks who can’t wait to pass along a good rumor. Or rather a bad one.
We can’t say we expect truth from all our politicians. We know better than that, and so do you, Gentle and Skeptical Reader. But it would be nice if pols like Jon Woods wouldn’t try to be quite so creative when they produce these stretchers.
Mr. Woods, if we may, a personal word: When you spread such rumors, you only hurt your own cause. Just as denying bright, hard-working kids who have spent almost all their lives as Americans and Arkansans only hurts the future of this state, which can use all the bright, hard-working college grads we can turn out.
Besides, denying state benefits to those here illegally—whether through no fault of their own or by more nefarious means—is already covered by state and federal law. Mr. Woods, surely there’s a better argument, even for a still new and not very impressive legislator, to make for your position. It’s not a position we share, but we’d all benefit from debating it on a factual plane. Then again, maybe the argument from fear is the only one that Jon Woods and semi-hysterical company have.
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