Chicken-Fried News: “T” = terrible

OK, so no one reading this needs Chicken-Fried News to tell them that former state Sen. Ralph Shortey has acted like a hypocritical creep.

Police recently released body cam footage from the night law enforcement found Shortey in a Super 8 Motel with a 17-year-old boy and the smell of raw marijuana. The Oklahoma City Republican resigned in March and in November pleaded guilty to child sex trafficking charges.

Shortey is not the first “family values” politician to say one thing in public and act very differently in private. And he probably won’t be the last.

There is no need to rehash the details of his exchange with a minor. The real interesting tidbit from the body cam video is the T-shirt Shortey was wearing at the time.

“Ephesians 5:22” — a patriarchal (some would say misogynistic) and contemporarily problematic quote reading, “Wives, submit yourself to your husbands as you do the Lord” — was printed in big letters across the chest. Under that is a picture of a sandwich and the accompanying phrase, “Now go make me a sandwich.”

If this was a detail in a movie about the downfall of a try-hard, gun-toting conservative state legislator, we would say it was a little over the top. Who but an intentional villain would wear something like that? Did Shortey find this shirt next to Andy Kaufman’s old woman-wrestling championship dubs?

Soon enough, Shortey will likely be trading in his trollish T’s for orange jumpsuits as he serves his sentence for child sex trafficking. Perhaps someone can put together a new shirt with Shortey’s face and the verse Leviticus 24:12: “They put him in custody until the will of the Lord should be made clear to them.”

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