Mostly off target

Riff Raff, by Michael Tilley
[email protected]

There is this thing called The Arkansas Report that gets e-mailed to a group of subscribers around the state. It is produced by Roby Brock, with Little Rock-based Talk Business, and yours truly.

And, yes, folks subscribe to stuff we write. And, yes, no one was more surprised than me about that fact.

Anyway, the last section of The Arkansas Report is titled, “What’s Next?” It’s the section in which Brock, myself and a few other journalists and alleged journalists prognosticate on a wide variety of issues. Can’t speak for the others, but my prognostications are more in the “wild-ass guessing” category.

As part of my New Year’s resolution to be more humble and self-deprecating (with apologies to Mac Davis), following are few samples of my puny punditry proffered during 2011 and the first few weeks of 2012. (So as not to overdo the humility thing, a few of the prognostications listed below were on target. Also, the parenthetical comments following a few of the prognostication were not part of the original work.)

• Arkansas House Speaker Robert Moore, a Democrat, wants Legislators during the upcoming fiscal legislative session to “remain focused on the narrow mission” of the session. Good luck with that, Speaker Moore. It will be a big surprise if the large(r) contingent of Republicans will be able to avoid the political grandstanding temptations the session will provide during this highly charged Presidential election cycle.

• Ron Paul may score big in Iowa, but his campaign will be toast when the national media begins to more fully report the racist newsletter Paul once authored. He once noted after the Los Angeles riots: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” (Boy, was I wrong on this. At least in the early phases of the GOP presidential primary, overt racism is not a deal killer.)

• Give Malzahn two seasons and the talk gets serious about a War Memorial match between the Razorbacks and the Red Wolves.

• Barring a welcome resurgence in the national economy within the next six months, Whirlpool Corp. will cease production at its Fort Smith plant by late spring/early summer 2012, leaving only a skeleton crew at the large facility. (Pegged this one. Unfortunately.)

• Despite being pimped as much as possible by the East Coast media, the Occupy Wall Street “movement” will prove nothing more than an historical footnote buried deep in the chapter on miscellaneous oddities.

• It’s been weeks now since Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin said something dumb. It can’t last much longer. (It didn’t. Pegged this one, also. But some might argue this is less of a prediction and more of a statement of cycle; like predicting the sunrise will follow a sunset.)

• Get ready. The cabal of Republicans elected to the Arkansas Legislature in 2010 soon will be challenged by Tea Party Republicans who will argue the 2010 cabal failed to adequately push the cause of aggressive fiscal conservatism.

• That clicking you hear is the sound of reporters working on stories about what football coaches and trainers are or are not doing to protect players from the terrific summer heat. It will be a surprise if the Arkansas media cranks out less than 100 stories in the next few weeks on the topic.

• Someone will do something stupid — if not fatal or significantly damaging to property — with fireworks during the July 4th holiday and a breathless clamor will again arise from safety experts and other do-gooder folks who think a few more laws will erase the last remnants of human carelessness.

• Palin enters the race. Huckabee lands on a ticket as the VP. Obama moves slightly back to the political center, kills a few more terrorists and wins big in November 2012. (Could I have been more wrong?)

• At some point in the near future, leadership at the Arkansas GOP will briefly wonder if their blatant intimidation of Internet journalists was a good idea. However, the IQ that allowed them to conduct the intimidation will rise up and find justification for what is fundamentally an unjustifiable action.

There you have it.

Such errant crystal balling is certainly not anything I would want on a resume or made public, but figured it’d be safe to share with Kind Readers.