While we’re at it and because I know McDuff really hacks them off but……..look at the guy.
Gary Smithee, a co-worker at a Kansas City waste management company, called the police after recognizing Kenneth Allen McDuff on the television program America’s Most Wanted. [1]
McDuff was living in Kansas City, Missouri, under the fake name Richard Fowler and working as a garbage collector. After Smithee’s tip on May 1, 1992, the Kansas City Police Department checked fingerprints and arrested McDuff on May 4, 1992. [1, 2]
READER RANT
Well, BLESS PARNELL McNAMARA’S TRUTH-TELLIN’ LITTLE HEART. 😂😂😂
Y’all, I swear, sometimes listening to Parnell tell a story is like listening to your granddaddy describe the fish he caught in 1973.
First time he tells it, it weighed six pounds.
By supper it weighed twelve.
By Sunday morning, three grown men had to wrestle it into the boat.
And by Monday, the fish had a lawyer. 😂
Facts?
Oh honey, don’t clutter up a perfectly good Parnell story with FACTS.
Apparently those are just pesky little details for the rest of us.
Because Parnell can say something with such confidence that you almost expect somebody standing behind him holding up a sign:
“PLEASE DO NOT FACT-CHECK THE SHERIFF WHILE HE IS STORYTELLING.” 😂
And Lord help you if somebody actually produces information showing what he told everybody wasn’t right.
Does Parnell come running back to the citizens saying:
“Folks, I told y’all something that wasn’t accurate, and I need to correct it”?
😂😂😂
Oh, sugar.
YOU MUST BE NEW HERE.
Around these parts, apparently the original story gets a FIRST-CLASS TICKET all over McLennan County…
while the correction gets put barefoot on a dirt road with a sack lunch and told:
“Good luck, little buddy.” 😂
The original statement gets a microphone.
The truth gets a scavenger hunt.
“WELCOME TO McLENNAN COUNTY! TODAY’S ACTIVITY: FIND THE CORRECTION!”
First prize?
A public-records request.
Second prize?
TWO public-records requests. 😂😂😂
But all joking aside, this is where it stops being funny.
Parnell McNamara isn’t somebody sitting at the feed store telling tall tales.
He is the elected Sheriff of McLennan County.
And when an elected official gives the public information that turns out to be false or materially misleading, the people who elected him deserve a correction just as publicly as they received the original statement.
That is what accountability looks like.
What concerns me is what appears to be a pattern with Parnell: say whatever fits the moment, and when facts later contradict the story, don’t make the same effort to correct the record with the citizens who heard it in the first place.
You don’t get to tell the taxpayers one thing, discover that it isn’t true, and then quietly leave the original version floating around McLennan County as though nothing happened.
CORRECT THE RECORD.
Not privately.
Not six months later.
Not buried somewhere nobody will ever see it.
Correct it to the same people you told it to in the first place.
Because these aren’t Parnell McNamara’s subjects.
They aren’t his employees.
And they certainly aren’t an audience that should simply accept whatever version of events they’re handed.
THEY ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ELECTED HIM.
Parnell works for THEM.
And regardless of whether somebody voted for him, voted against him, loves him, can’t stand him, or couldn’t pick him out of a lineup at Buc-ee’s…
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS ENTITLED TO THE TRUTH FROM THEIR ELECTED SHERIFF.
So yes, we’ll laugh at the absurdity.
We’ll make jokes.
We’ll say “Bless his heart.”
But underneath all that laughter is a very serious question:
WHEN PARNELL McNAMARA TELLS THE PEOPLE OF McLENNAN COUNTY SOMETHING THAT ISN’T TRUE…
WHY DOESN’T PARNELL McNAMARA GO BACK TO THOSE SAME PEOPLE AND CORRECT IT?
Because “Trust me, I’m the Sheriff” isn’t transparency.
And a badge doesn’t magically turn a false statement into the truth.
Bless his heart.
