Exposure Of Tom Cotton Isn’t The First Time Arkansas’ Media Failed The Nation

Late Saturday night, Salon’s Roger Sollenberger dropped a devastating report that revealed Senator Tom Cotton had built his entire career on an outrageous lie. The junior Senator from Arkansas has frequently billed himself as a former Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it turns out that he never served in the elite 75th Ranger Regiment. The fact that Cotton already had a distinguished career in the Army–including two commendations and a Bronze Star–makes his exposure even more outrageous.

Cotton attended Ranger School, a two-month tactical course open to any Army member in good standing. By completing the course, he earned the right to wear the “Ranger tab” on his uniform. While “Ranger tab” and “Army Ranger” are often confused outside military circles, military protocol is clear–unless you served in the 75th, you cannot call yourself a Ranger.

Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado, himself a Ranger, reminded Cotton of this on Saturday.

Hey @SenTomCotton, unless you wore one of these berets you shouldn't be calling yourself a Ranger.

Truth matters. https://t.co/ZxUHXE2TwM pic.twitter.com/TGxnwWEgwE

— Rep. Jason Crow (@RepJasonCrow) January 23, 2021

Even more staggering is that, in the absence of something we haven’t heard or seen, no one in the Arkansas local media corps saw fit to vet Cotton’s claims to be a Ranger. It’s not that they didn’t have the opportunity to do so before Salon’s exposure. In 2012, when he mounted what would be a successful bid for Congress representing much of southwestern Arkansas, Cotton frequently touted his experience as a “U. S. Army Ranger.”

Let it be said clear, straight, and at once–the exposure of Cotton as a liar should also be reckoned as a searing indictment of Arkansas’ local press. The consequences of this dereliction are staggering. Had Cotton’s lies about his military record been caught in 2012, it’s a safe bet that he would have never made it to Congress for a single term. And had this exposure happened when he was running for Senate in 2014, that bid would have likely been dead in the water. Indeed, if I were Mark Pryor, the man Cotton upended in that race, I would have every right to raise hell.

Had these lies been exposed sooner, we would have never seen Cotton’s now-infamous letter to the Iranian mullahs questioning the Obama administration’s ability to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran–an episode that won Cotton the nickname “Tehran Tom.” We would have likely never seen an equally infamous op-ed in which Cotton called for military force to quell protests against racial injustice.

But believe it or not, that’s not the most egregious case in recent memory where the nation ended up getting the bill after the Natural State’s fifth estate fell asleep at the wheel. How do you get worse than failing to expose a politician’s lies? Quite easily, as it turns out. Arkansas’ local media missed an opportunity to unmask America’s most infamous babymakers, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, at least a year before the nation was introduced to them.

You may recall that in 2015, we learned that the Duggars’ oldest son, Josh, had molested several girls in 2002 and 2003–including his own sisters. Soon after that scandal broke, the Inquisitr revealed that the Duggars’ living situation at the time almost certainly created the environment that led to that abuse. When Discovery Communications first introduced the nation to the Duggars in 2003, they were living in a three-bedroom, two-bath house in Springdale–the sister city of Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas.

At the time, the Duggar clan comprised Jim Bob, Michelle, and 14 children, nine of whom had been born in the time that the Duggars moved there in 1993. In the time Discovery Health and TLC filmed three one-hour specials about the Duggars, Michelle gave birth to two more. Do the math–18 people were jammed into a house designed for, at most, six people.

This situation created a smorgasbord of logistical nightmares. The kids had to take showers in shifts; some went on Monday, others on Tuesday. But most seriously, since there wasn’t nearly enough room for room for each kid to have his or her own bed, boys and girls had to share the same room, and even shared the same beds. In other words, this created a situation where inappropriate touching and fondling could easily occur.

The Duggars were not only flouting basic standards of safety and sanitation, but were also flouting the law. Like nearly all decent-sized cities, Springdale requires safe occupancy limits to be written into all residential building permits. They not only spell out the maximum number of people who can live in a house, but also set minimum square footage for bedrooms. As real estate agents, Jim Bob and Michelle were required by state law to know about these requirements. And yet, they simply ignored them.

Additionally, the Duggars’ real estate investments almost certainly gave them the financial means to get a better living situation for their growing clan. Their failure to do so appeared to meet the legal definition of child neglect in Arkansas. Indeed, Jim Bob openly boasted about how he forced his kids to wear second-hand shoes.

Jim Bob, as we all know, served a single term in the state house as a Republican from 2001 to 2003. It simply defies belief that Jim Bob would have made it out of the Republican primary–then as now, the real contest in congested-red northwest Arkansas–had the truth about his family’s living situation been known. The exposure of a man who could find the time to serve in Little Rock, but not find the time to get a better living situation for his family, would have all but ended Jim Bob’s political career before it started.

Now here’s where this situation gets hideous. In 2002, Jim Bob gave up his state house seat to challenge then-Senator Tim Hutchinson, brother of now-governor Asa Hutchinson, in the Republican primary. He financed his bid with $250,000 of his own money. So he could spend $250,000 to run for Senate, but not get a bigger house for his family? Indeed, $250,000 would have been more than enough at the time to get a decent-sized single-family house in that part of Arkansas.

Ultimately, Jim Bob finished a distant second behind Hutchinson, garnering only 22 percent of the vote. But had the media delved more into Jim Bob’s background, they would have seen a man who could plunk down $250,000 to run for Senate while forcing his family to live in an unsafe, unsanitary and unlawful situation.

It’s a near-certainty that after the exposure of the Duggars’ living situation, Josh’s molestation of his sisters and other girls in the neighborhood would have come to light as well. Additionally, we would have learned about how Jim Bob and Michelle deliberately slow-walked reporting it, even though there was no morally or legally defensible reason to do so. There’s no question about it–had the media vetted the Duggars sooner, Josh’s abuse, as well as the Duggars’ decision to cover it up, would have come to light well before Discovery even heard of them. Indeed, the argument can be made that had the media delved into the Duggars in 2000, the abuse would have never happened.

Cotton’s deceit and the Duggars’ disregard for their kids’ safety ought to be reckoned as black eyes for the local media in Arkansas. In both cases, the exposure of both these outrages could have easily been done with some old-fashioned legwork by people right at home. The fact it took the national media to do what the local media should have done says a lot about the state of the local press–and it isn’t good.