{"id":16112,"date":"2021-06-02T01:09:43","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T01:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=16112"},"modified":"2021-06-01T19:58:13","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T19:58:13","slug":"little-littler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/02\/little-littler\/","title":{"rendered":"Little & Littler"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n

When the cat\u2019s away the mice will play. And that\u2019s essentially what happened last week when Idaho governor Brad Little took what turned out to be a big trip out of state to attend the Republican Governors Association conference in Nashville.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. Photo credits: State of Idaho<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the state constitution dictates, when the sitting governor steps out of state, the lieutenant governor steps in. So for a short period of time Janice McGeachin was the Gem State\u2019s supreme leader, and she swiftly removed the tyrannical veil we\u2019ve all been living under the past year by mandating no more mask mandates because mandates don\u2019t work\u2014except in hospitals, so her executive order decreed, more or less.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not even going to bother mansplaining Little\u2019s point of view versus McGeachin\u2019s point of view. We\u2019ve heard all versions of all sides and it\u2019s the only thing we\u2019re more sick of than actually wearing our masks, which the CDC\u2014more than a week before McGeachin\u2019s order\u2014said we don\u2019t need to do anymore if we\u2019ve been vaccinated. <\/span><\/p>\n

What I am going to do, as an experienced writer and fan of good writing, is analyze the sheer genius of Little\u2019s public statement on the matter. Kudos to whomever penned it. <–That\u2019s not a knock on the governor, as I\u2019m certain some of it came directly from him. However, anything released out of a politician\u2019s office had several folks at least tweak it. Or, at least it should have.<\/p>\n

Slap in the face<\/b><\/p>\n

Little opens his message by stating that \u201cwe could talk \u2019til we\u2019re blue in the face\u201d about masks. You have to give credit to both his wit (blue, as in liberal?) and sense of mask metaphor (masks go on the face), and he softens it with a Mozart-esque use of a contraction (\u2019til rather than until). Well played, sir.<\/p>\n

Hypocrite much?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cAn executive order that was issued while I was out of state this week runs contrary to a basic conservative principle\u2014the government closest to the people governs best,\u201d Little (et al.?) wrote. It\u2019s a polite way of calling his lieutenant governor misguided at best and a hypocrite at worst. Now, as someone who does not self-identify as conservative, I need to point out there are myriad problems with this neither liberal nor conservative principle of local control. Jim Crow laws and slavery were local control. So, we should wave the \u201cgoverns best\u201d flag on a case by case basis, rather than axiomatically. Otherwise, we can sometimes be far worse than just hypocritical. And if you don\u2019t buy that, consider how you\u2019d feel if your local city council banned AR-15s. You may want to resort to federal law then.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the law, stupid<\/b><\/p>\n

At one point in the message, Little runs down some of the practical and legal reasons McGeachin\u2019s executive order doesn\u2019t pass muster. And then delivers the line, \u201cThis is why you do your homework, Lt. Governor.\u201d [Insert boom GIF here.] Talk about calling someone stupid without calling them stupid \u2026 wow.<\/p>\n

No stunts stunt<\/b><\/p>\n

Finally, Little wraps up his message by denouncing the use of position (like a three-day stint as state governor) to carry out a political stunt. And then promptly spends the next three paragraphs or so giving examples of how\u2014at least in his eyes\u2014he has helped make the state a great place to live.<\/p>\n

Little\u2019s message shows he\u2019s not beneath petty politics after all, but that when forced to react, he can go big and at least appear as though he\u2019s being the bigger person who\u2019s above it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine When the cat\u2019s away the mice will play. And that\u2019s essentially what happened last week when Idaho governor Brad Little took what turned out to be a big trip out of state to attend the Republican Governors Association conference in Nashville. As the state constitution dictates, when the sitting governor steps out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16116,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16112\/revisions\/16116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}