Oklahoma House Speaker Kyle Hilbert said today he believes scenes depicting fully nude women in a 1985 Jackie Chan movie were responsible for the bizarre upheaval during a July 24 State Board of Education executive session that drew national attention.
While Hilbert said the film aired on Samsung’s TV Plus “Movie Hub Action” Channel 1204 during the time of the incident, his press release indicates that Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters privately discussed what he saw on the screen after avoiding such questions publicly and instead alleging Gov. Kevin Stitt and his appointed board members had orchestrated a conspiracy of “lies” to “assassinate” his character.
“This information seems to vindicate both the state superintendent as well as the two board members,” said Hilbert (R-Bristow). “It is not credible to believe that the superintendent or any member of his staff intentionally played an inappropriate film in the middle of an active board meeting. Additionally, it does not appear that Samsung’s internal movie channels list streamable content days in advance so a planned conspiracy would be highly unlikely. Instead, the available evidence points to a bizarre accident involving a newly installed television defaulting to a pre-programmed channel.”
Walters’ office did not respond to a request for comment before the publication of this article, although near 5 p.m. he tweeted a gif from the movie Tombstone of Wyatt Earp saying, “Hell’s coming with me.”
With the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office still collecting information for its own report, questions remain as to why Walters erroneously told media his office TV featured only a “cable TV box” and had no other streaming or media capabilities, a statement shown to be false by reports from the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and a third-party cybersecurity firm that reviewed the device. Walters also claimed the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office had concluded its investigation of the situation, prompting Sheriff Tommie Johnson to say that was also untrue.
Hilbert’s proposed explanation appears to align with some details reported by State Board of Education members Ryan Deatherage and Becky Carson.
On July 25, Deatherage and Carson both described the footage they saw as “retro” in nature, with Deatherage comparing it to M*A*S*H or Gilligan’s Island, but with nudity.
Rated “R” and released in 1985, The Protector stars Jackie Chan and Danny Aiello in a story about two New York police officers who travel to Hong Kong after the daughter of a wealthy businessman is kidnapped by a drug lord. While Chan reportedly edited nudity out of the film’s Hong Kong release, a YouTube version of the movie includes at least three scenes with nude women at roughly the 34-minute mark, the 65-minute mark and the 69-minute mark.
Deatherage said he saw the nudity first during presentations about a Bethany Public Schools transfer denial, but he said he remained silent about it owing to the sensitive topic involving a parent during the meeting’s executive session. Carson saw nudity on the screen later during the private meeting and demanded that Walters turn the TV off.
Asked to estimate the time between when he first saw nudity and when Carson saw “nipples” and “pubic hair,” Deatherage’s answer could align of the movie.
“If I were guessing now, I’d say somewhere around 30 minutes, maybe. I don’t recall. I really don’t,” Deatherage said Tuesday. “What I’m trying to do is think about how long it took the parent to talk and then the (school district) superintendent to talk. So I’m guessing it was somewhere between 15 minutes and 30 minutes.”
Shown the two blurred screenshots from the movie depicted above — in chronological order — Carson said the images she saw were “not at all the first” but “possibly the second.”
She said she had no desire to watch the full movie but that she does have a question about Hilbert’s statement that the explanation “seems to vindicate” Walters.
“My question would be, ‘What is he vindicated of?'” Carson asked. “It proves that we saw what we saw, that we weren’t lying. But it does not erase the fact that he stood before not just Oklahoma — this went worldwide — and so he stood up in front of the world and called us liars, defamed our characters, basically did a character assassination and thinks he can just walk away from it.”
Carson: ‘His story has changed’
Carson, who taught special education and elementary education before her retirement, said Walters’ public responses to the situation fell short of the honesty any teacher would try to instill in their students.
“There’s still that issue of, you know, you’re somebody who is representing education in the state of Oklahoma, and you’re showing our children that it’s OK to stand up in front of them and lie,” Carson said. “His story has changed at least five times now. We’ve gone from (him saying) it never happened to being able to describe a scene in the movie.”
Carson was referencing a portion of Hilbert’s press release where the House speaker described a conversation he had with Walters.
“Upon reviewing the parental guidance summary for The Protector on IMDB, it is clear that the content described by the board members matches scenes from that movie,” Hilbert said. “Additionally, this matches information shared with me in a phone call with the state superintendent on Saturday, July 26, where he explained to me what he thought he saw on the screen when he turned around to turn it off was a doctor and a nurse and that he saw a white lab coat.”
In his press release, Hilbert said he contacted a “government affairs specialist” for Samsung to determine what movies had played on Channel 1204, which was identified by investigators with Alias Cybersecurity as the most recent channel viewed on Walters’ TV.
“It was, understandably, an unusual inquiry, and it took several days to receive a response,” Hilbert said. “However, this morning, I was provided confirmation that the films airing during that timeframe were The Protector (1985) followed by The Foreigner (2017).”
IMDb’s parental guide for The Protector lists “severe” nudity in the movie, most notably in a scene featuring a nude masseuse and a scene featuring naked women working at a heroin factory. The masseuse seen near the 34-minute mark of the film could match Deatherage’s description of a woman near a “chiropractic table.”
RELATED
As board members call Walters’ collusion accusation ‘ludicrous,’ third-party report offers new TV details by Sasha Ndisabiye
While Hilbert said the Jackie Chan movie airing on Channel 1204 during the board meeting offers “the most plausible explanation” for what happened, early reactions on social media from Oklahomans indicate that Walters’ own words last week may have made the situation worse for him as he ponders a gubernatorial campaign.
“My family has watched as board members stopped at nothing to stop education reform in the state of Oklahoma,” Walters said during a July 29 press conference. “These board members have a lot to answer for, and so does the governor of the state of Oklahoma. Did he direct these board members to lie about me? Did he direct his board members to go in and disrupt everything in these board meetings? Did he have the board fight against bringing private schools into the state for families? That’s school choice. What exact directives were they given? We have had our name cleared by both of them, yes, and the sheriff’s office. There is nothing scandalous that I was a part of whatsoever, and the lies will have consequences.”
Deatherage and Carson each said they spoke with Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office investigators last week, and Carson emphasized that neither board member accused Walters “of anything” other than failing to acknowledge the situation and apologize for nude images somehow being on his screen during the meeting.
“The reason I stepped forward was, one, because I thought it was important for him to be held accountable. You know, we have to be accountable for our actions — everybody, whether you’re in education or some other field,” Carson said. “And I hope, what I wanted others to see is that, yeah, it’s going to be hard to stand up and speak your truth, and it’s going to be difficult, and you’re going to be called names, and you’re going to get nasty emails — which I have. I’ve gotten tons of positives that have totally outweighed the negative, but you do get those, they trickle in, and they hurt, and I can’t keep from being hurt. (…) What I wanted people to see is that, you know, you have to stand up for what is right, and it’s not going to be easy, but it’s the only way we make change.”
