Wait a minute, remember when the news networks were camped outside the Lakota administration building, reporting on every time Darbi Boddy turned her head all over a controversy involving a porn link that she accidentally posted as she was trying to bring awareness to parents about sexual grooming within the school. Everyone, including the president of the Lakota school board, Lynda O’Conner, was calling for newly elected first-year school board member Darbi to resign over the issue. Of course, Darbi meant well when she provided the information, but with porn being what it is these days, which is everywhere, it’s hard to avoid pornography when it comes to the internet. When dealing with websites of any kind, pornography, unfortunately, is always in the background, and a little mistake in any web address can lead to a porn site. When Darbi found herself in the controversy, I said the same thing I’m saying now, it’s not a big deal. It was an honest mistake and wasn’t worth her resigning over. But the teacher’s union activists and Lynda herself piled onto Darbi, and the news coverage was national. It found its way to the cover story of Yahoo News. That seemed ridiculous, and it was that Pandora’s Box and the activism of the former superintendent, Matt Miller, that opened the door for all the crazy stuff that happened thereafter, which eventually cost the superintendent his job. So it was a bit perplexing that it was discovered that Lynda O’Conner herself, over the last weekend of February was that her campaign site was linking viewers to a Japanese porn site, which shocked those who saw it. Screenshots flooded in with the information I thought was an honest mistake. But given her statements about Darbi, it was a bit shocking. 

Now I know Lynda O’Conner pretty well; I doubt she has some crazy alternative lifestyle that involves Japanese porn. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation, an accidental occurrence that would have allowed such a thing to occur. But given the way the media treated Darbi, I thought Lynda was done for in politics. If it was an apples-to-apples comparison, I know how hard that accident was for Darbi. Lynda would undoubtedly have difficulty explaining it if the same wolves jumped all over her from the radical elements. But what was strange was that immediately in the wake of this event, nobody seemed to care. It was as if it was no big deal.

There were no calls for Lynda’s resignation or signature writing campaign to remove her from office. The labor union wasn’t seeking to tear her from limb to limb. All Lynda had to do was apologize, take down the link and provide a brief statement. And everything was just fine, just like that. I kept looking for Karin Johnson from Channel 5 to camp outside of Lynda’s house for her explosive interview on the matter, or Jennifer Edwards from Fox 19 to do a 1000-word article and to post it all over Twitter. But nothing. Not even crickets. It was so mysterious. How could something be such a big deal for one school board member of equal status but not for another within a year of each other? We’re not even talking about a generational difference in values here; in this case, it was just months. Yet the outcomes were entirely different. 

I remember what it was like growing up; if you wanted to look at a Penthouse, Playboy, or Hustler magazine, they kept them on the top rack at a magazine stand, and if you were under 18 and tried to pull one down, the clerk would scold you. It was like that for “R” rated movies, too; if you tried to sneak in, usually there was always a theater employee who would find you and remove you from the theater. This happened to me several times when I saw Scarface at the theater, Conan the Barbarian, and the first Terminator film. All of those were movies where I paid for a ticket to see a “PG” rated movie but went into an “R” rated theater to see the movie I really wanted to see. And they saw me sitting there, not looking 18, and told me to leave. We aren’t living in those kinds of days anymore. I understand that.

In many cases, the kids in Lakota are watching porn at school on their phones. I’m not at all in support of pornography. I personally think it should all be outlawed completely. But my thoughts about Darbi’s honest attempts to communicate where porn came into the picture and the obvious accident by Lynda O’Conner were no big deal to me in both cases. Yet in one case, Darbi, the world came down on her to force her resignation, but in the other, the school board president, Lynda, only political rivals noticed the activity and seemed to have a problem with it. With all the talk of preserving kids from harmful porn, everyone cared when it was Darbi, but nobody cared when it came down to Lynda. That’s because Lynda benefits the radical element, and Darbi is a threat to it. This proves that the porn issue at Lakota was nothing but politics all along. It was never about kids or saving them from pornographic content. It was 100% about politics and only politics. 

When people say, “politics don’t belong in the schools” and that “we should put kids before politics,” they understand that public schools, government schools, are nothing but politics. The kids are only free babysitting services for the parents, who get the taxpayers to compensate for their career choices by hiring people to take care of their kids while they are busy doing whatever their young adult lives can dream up. There is nothing about the kids that really care for the outcome of healthy children in public schools. They are all about progressive politics that seek to undermine the American family and replace the parents with government as the new parental figure. Kids are used to advance a political cause, such as was the case with Darbi Boddy. When it served the radical left, the Joe Biden voting losers in our community, they used an accident to justify destroying a new school board member because they didn’t like her politics. But for the exact same occurrence, Lynda O’Conner, who has sold herself as a Republican, has shown useful to the radical elements which really run the school. And their hypocrisy says more than any political theater ever could. But I say, in Lynda’s case, don’t ask her to resign. Don’t campaign to remove her from the board, as has been done with Darbi Boddy. We are in an election year. Let merit decide; put these kinds of things in the voter’s hands. And let them pick the fate of the school board. Let them apply the wrath of the community. Don’t look for the media, school board, or even labor unions to show righteous indignation because they won’t. Instead, turn to the voters and let them speak with the voice that everyone really fears. People see what has been going on. And when it comes to election day, make sure they remember. 

Rich Hoffman