So to continue my comment:
Recap:
My comment is gonna be long — just warning you. Nah, maybe I’ll preview it here and write a diary for the rest — still gonna be long, though. Seems I’m feeling chatty this week …
Believe it or not, my heart hurt for a minute when I read this. I don’t quite know how to feel, yet.
I have always had mixed feelings about that man and his politics. I first met him when I was graduating high school. I can say, even when we disagreed vehemently on something, I knew I could reach out to him, and he’d listen. Then, of course, he’d do what he damn well pleased, or what the Koch brothers or the oil companies paid him to …
Even so, I can can point to times he did good, tried to consider all his constituents, and times when he wasn’t as extreme as he became. I’ll even say, in public, we owed him one, my family and I.
Still, it’s one less right-wing, over-the-top evangelical, climate-denying jackass we have to fight. … The rest of my Inhofe tale is linked below if you care to know about another side of him.
So our — my fam’s — first encounter with Mr. Inhofe was when he ran for mayor — my family was probably the only Democrats within 5 miles the night he held his first big campaign event. STILL don’t know how mom and dad knew him or what we were doing there … just cause we were invited …
The highlight of the event for us kids, was watching Inhofe’s kids push RJ LaFortune (former mayor and a fellow Chegg — yay!) into the hotel pool …
My mother also worked closely with him and his office for years: she headed up a local federal social program for nearly 25 yrs … and I can say some confidence, it’s likely the only social program Inhofe EVER gave full-throated support to.
So back on topic: never liked him (getting that out there up front), but my family had a long … don’t know what to call it: relationship? — with his political self, even though we were as far to the left as he was to the right. Had the kind of relationship where, if we needed help or had policy concerns, we could call his office and he would always call back to talk. And act, if he could. Let me share a couple of stories.
Case #1: as the sexual assault/abuse scandals in the military were coming to the fore in the 90s and 20-aughts, there were several cases where victims were coming forward, only to be harassed, intimidated, given Article 32s hearing that they ALWAYS lost, by the cadre and the military courts. One case in particular, the young lady, a 19-year-old private, had been tried, convicted, and sentenced for under-aged drinking after she’d been gang-raped by 5 of her squad members at a party and she reported it — they tore her to shreds and left her sterile. And broken. Then she was jailed at Fort Lost-in-the-Woods, I think. The military did investigate her case, but the military prosecutor gave her attackers immunity in exchange for testifying against her at an Article 32 for drinking.
I was part of a group trying to get women like her freed and heard, so I reached out to Inhofe, chair of the Armed Services Committee, to ask for a meeting: we were able to convince him to investigate that case and others — he got her released, somehow … and he kept those hearings going until, eventually reforms were instituted. I never spoke to him again about it, except to thank him — something he wasn’t comfortable with, but nevertheless, he acted. And that remained my experience, his responsiveness to constituents of both parties, as far as I knew, until GW Bush’s tenure, when Inhofe went full-on evangelical and fully embraced tea party activism.
Personally, I owed him one.
Case #2: when my father was dying, my brothers (both career military just like our Daddee) were deployed and transitioning duty stations: one in the midst of moving from Bagdad to Kadena (fam moving from Dayton), the other had just TDY’d to Osan from McChord. My father’s doctor was being a right royal bastard — he REFUSED to sign the paperwork to get them back on compassionate leave, saying they needed to stay where they were since it was likely the only useful — and legal — thing they’d ever done in their lives anyway, and got really burnt mad when we got them back stateside anyway, without him (!).
SOB was so mad he called the Red Cross AND the AF to find out HOW we did it and why we were allowed to, without him signing the paperwork … ha ha. And I’m still mad about THAT.
So, back to my Inhofe story: How I got around the doctor: I made two phone calls to get help bringing the brothers and their families back. As a result, and per my requests, Hillary Roddam Clinton and Jim Inhofe worked together to get my brothers back so they could say goodbye. Hillary (I spoke to her directly) got one brother back in 13 hours and then brought his family over in 48 hours. Inhofe called me back himself to update and sent someone from his office to check on my mom while I was flying home from NY, and got the other one back here in 24 hours, with his family arriving in 48 hours on the same plane with our other brother’s family. I will be forever grateful for that, to both Clinton (a story for another time — perhaps) and Inhofe. And Inhofe also made sure both of them stayed stateside until they retired and let me know he had.
So, the point to all the long story was: he once had the remains of a good man about his person. He was good to me and mine. He was someone I could have heated political arguments with, on things that mattered to me, and he would, at least, listen, although I could NEVER convince him to hear anything about Global Warming.
I was working in Alternative Energy and Nano-materials research for most of my career, from the count of jump, almost and CONSTANTLY hit heads with him on that (his objections were based on religion) — Inhofe didn’t believe in nano-materials either, BTW.
I never liked him, but I respected him. RIP, you bastard. And thanks.