Competition is robust for the title of Tennessee’s Most Embarrassing Public Official, a contest I hereby create. The legislature alone is deep with worthy contenders, each seemingly intent on out-dumbing the other on any given day.
To name but a few I’ve written about before: Sen. Janice Bowling, with her belief that Tennessee schools are providing litter boxes for students identifying as cats; Rep. Gino Bulso, with his opposition to barring first cousins from marrying each other; Rep. Todd Warner, for his bill to rename Nashville’s airport for Donald Trump.
And, in the Emeritus But Dead category, the late Sen. Frank Niceley, with his persistent efforts to claim Tennessee’s “right” to nullify federal law. (Note: A rather more prominent Tennessean, Andrew Jackson, put the kibosh on that notion back in 1832.)
I could cite many more challengers, believe me.
But let’s give credit where credit is due: Time and again, Andy Ogles, the Fifth District congressman, proves he’s the class of this embarrassing field. His talent for inducing cringe is not just unsurpassed, it is unequaled. Everybody else is just scrambling for a runner-up spot.
The latest entry in a long line from Ogles is this tweet on his official X account, which may well have come to your attention: “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.”
Some context here: For decades, June has been known as Pride Month, a celebration of lesbian, gay and etc. life in America. Bill Clinton was the first president to proclaim a national Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, back in 1999.
Various communities across Tennessee observe Pride Month in various ways. Nashville, for example, plans a downtown parade and a June 27 festival at Centennial Park.
Tennessee as a whole? No. In fact, a bill in the past session would have barred the state and any political subdivision from taking any act “that recognizes or acknowledges the month of June or another period of time as an LGBTQ pride period.”
The measure – did I mention Bulso was the House sponsor? – failed in a Senate committee. But a resolution proclaiming June “Nuclear Family Month” – widely viewed as a rebuke to all things Pride – sailed through the House and the Senate and was (of course) signed by Gov. Bill Lee.
Hence the reference in the Ogles tweet.
A tweet that, after an outcry even from Republican colleagues, Ogles deleted and claimed not to have posted in the first place. He blamed a member of his communications team.
“The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus,” he posted. “The employee has been reprimanded.”
First of all: Reprimanded? A congressional staffer who harbors such homophobic sentiments should quickly become an ex-staffer. (Any bets on that happening?)
Second: The tweet in question followed an earlier one from March, including this assertion: “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” Does the phrasing sound at all familiar?
That one stirred up a fuss, too, including a resolution by Rep. Shri Thanedar, a Michigan Democrat, calling on the House to censure Ogles.
“Whereas, Representative Andrew Ogles has a repeated history of using his official accounts on social media platforms to spread Islamophobic, racist, and anti-immigrant rhetoric; language and behavior unfit for a Member of Congress. …”
That will go nowhere, of course. But even some Republicans took issue with the post on homosexuals, with the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, calling the comments “reprehensible.”
As for Ogles’s disavowal of the tweet, should we take him at his word, that it was posted by the unnamed staffer while Ogles was innocently “working on the farm?”
Considering his history of bogus assertions, it’s hard to give Ogles the benefit of the doubt. A short recap: He’s claimed to have worked in law enforcement in the field of “human trafficking,” when he was actually just a volunteer reserve deputy with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office.
He’s claimed multiple times to be an “economist,” but his credentials include only one junior college class in economics. And he’s claimed to have done graduate work at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth business schools, but completed only nondegree courses for certificates.
As ever, a hat-tip to Channel 5’s Phil Williams for uncovering so many Ogles frauds.
It is possible – again, on any given day – for some other Tennessee official to come forth with jaw-dropping inanities. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, for instance, should never be counted out when it comes to lamebrain utterances. And Rep. Tim Burchett seems incapable of not saying something half-witted, which he thinks of as being clever.
But Ogles is the gold standard. I can’t respect the guy. But I do marvel at him.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at jrogink@gmail.com