Just a good ol’ boy…

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Long before it was my job to report the various goings-on around our community, I heard about ths so-called “Good Ol’ Boy Network” that apparently ran things around these parts.

Actually, lots of parts, if the internet is to be believed.

If you somehow haven’t heard this phrase before, the phrase refers to an under-the-table system of favoritism and networking in which a group of established, wealthy white men have all of the money and the power and the influence over a town or a community or even a larger area, most frequently seen in the southern United States. It’s not necesserily “bad” per se, but there is a certain connotation that it’s not all above-board.

The idea isn’t new by any means. The “Old Boy Network” has been a thing for hundredt of years in places like England, where if you had connections to the right Old Boys” you could

See VIEWPOINT, page A5 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

pretty much do whatever you wanted. I guess the southern phrase “Good Ol’ Boy,” as in someone “never meanin’ no harm,” as I understand it, meshed with the “Old Boy Network, “ and somewhere in the early 20th century, the Good Ol’ Boy Network took over, and in some parts of the South never really let go.

I have questions…

How does one become a member of this Good Ol’ Boy Network? Is it like the Masons or the Country Club? I mean, I’m pretty good, I’m getting kind of old and I am a boy, so I seem like a natural fit. I don’t really have the money part down pat, but I do weild a little influence through the paper and I can definitely be bribed or otherwise coerced into printing news favorable to the cause.

If any of you good old boys are reading this, just let me know when the next meeting is and I’ll be there.

Actually, are the Good Ol’ Boys still even in charge? I know things have gotten pretty “woke” these days and it’s probably the worst time ever to be a good old boy, but it seems like if there were any place in 2024 where a Good Ol’ Boy Network would still be up and running it’s Arkansas, so maybe?

And hey, if you Good Ol’ Boys are still alive and kicking can you maybe use a little of that influence to get the Rich Road Bridge finished?

Like, pretty please?