“Community Columnist” Michael Schrader

(About verbal abuse)

Written 10 September 2016

Typically, I like to write about local politics, as local politics impacts us the most and it seems to be what we care about the least. Because we tend to ignore local politics, it is where chicanery, tomfoolery, and general incompetence thrives. The best way to combat this is to make people aware of it; it is much harder to play the fool with 30,000 people looking than when no one is. Would you steal office supplies from work if you knew you were being watched? Only the most brazen would; the rest of us would not, as we would not want to tarnish our reputations.

That being said, this column will be atypical, so you local tomfoolers can breathe a hearty sigh of relief. Instead, I want to talk about national politics for a spell, in particular one of our presidential candidates – Hillary Rodham Clinton (or, HRC for short). I am also going to say that I am 100 percent an HRC supporter. Go ahead, shake your head. Curse me. Call me crazy and stupid. After all, she is vile and corrupt and a liar, right? She murdered Vince Foster! What about the e-mails? What about all the dastardly things she has done? She is evil personified! Or is she?

During the Clinton presidency, I lived in Arkansas. I didn’t just live there; I was immersed in Arkansas politics. I started out as a manager in a municipality. When you work in management at a municipality, you are involved in the decision making process and thus are an insider. There is the government, and then there is the “real government”, the behind-the-scenes “Good Ole Boys” (GOBs) who support the local politicians. Decisions at the local level inevitably benefit the GOBs, and the local bureaucrats (like I was) were given the choice of holding their collective noses and going along with the decisions of the GOBs or finding other employment. I made the latter choice and eventually unsuccessfully ran for mayor.

Along the way, I met a wonderful journalist who happened to know the publisher of a local newspaper and introduced me. Thus started my four years as a newspaper columnist in Arkansas. A good columnist, as a representative of the media outlet he or she is publishing for, will immerse him or herself into the topics, verifying facts, and following the trail wherever it leads to ensure the correctness of what he or she writes. A columnist who makes up stuff ultimately disrespects the outlet he or she is writing for, tarnishing its reputation. It was during this four year period as a columnist when I immersed myself deeply into Arkansas politics. It was also when I came to admire HRC.

There was an unspoken rule among the Arkansas GOBs back then – never ever criticize members of the club. Bill Clinton was the ultimate Arkansas GOB; his wife, however, was not. She was educated and had a career. Worse, she was a Yankee; she was not a true Arkansan. As we all know, Bill had a wandering eye. According to the GOB code, he could not be attacked; she could. And she was. Obviously, she was a terrible spouse and a horrible person, or else Bill would not stray. She was insulted as being cold hearted and ugly, and that their marriage was one of convenience, not of love. No matter how much he humiliated her with his wandering ways, it was her fault, and not his. There is a reason she claimed there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy”. While the vicious attacks continued, no one stood up for her. There is a reason that she did not want to go back to Arkansas after his presidency ended.

No matter what she did, the political foes of her husband roundly criticized her. When she went on 60 Minutes and made her now infamous “baking cookies” comment, she was criticized for insulting stay-at-home mothers. When the Monica Lewinski scandal broke, she was roundly insulted for not divorcing Bill.

Verbal abuse is still abuse, and she received a ton of it in Arkansas. Have we become that callous to the abused?

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