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Was It Even a Real News Story? · The Wes Carroll Morning Show

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The news, opinions, commentary, and interviews. You need to start your
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day. You're listening to the West Carrol Morning Show. Monday morning, sixth
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day of November. I'm Wes. Thanks for joining me. Like two and
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a half weeks to Thanksgiving. Yeah, it's gonna be quick. It's gonna
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go fast. It's gonna go really fast. Brace yourselves probably a good point.
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If you haven't already started thinking about shopping, maybe you should start making
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those moves to start getting the Christmas shopping stuff done. I'm very curious a
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lot of the Walmart stores in our area have done those complete overhauls of the
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register area, so as people are out doing their shopping for the holidays and
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things are going to be packed, there's not really a line anymore. Once
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upon a time, you had a cashier and a line, and you got
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in the line, and you went through the line, you got to the
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point where it was your turn to check out out, You had your stuff
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on the belt, you checked out, you left. Then the self checkouts
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came, and then there was a section of like a corral, if you
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will, of people with the self checkouts, and then there was a line
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for that. But that thing was always ridiculous. One time, I'm pretty
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sure I had to shoplift to get in line. The line went out of
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the store, so you had to go out of the not quite out of
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the store, close to the entrance to the store to go outside. I
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remember asking someone if it actually goes outside and we get in line outside,
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are we shoplifting? Have we officially committed a crime out the door? But
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then they would kind of rope them back around through the store instead, and
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it was insanity. Now it's just a bunch of self checkouts. There's a
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couple of actual cashiers in the middle, but there's self checkouts on the ends,
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and you just kind of stand wherever and wait for somebody to tell it's
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it's insanity. I don't know what they're going to do. I don't know
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if they're going to put any sort of corral to that. I don't know.
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It's very confusing, but we'll see. It's going to be interesting.
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That's why I say get shopping done early or online. Now that I'm always
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an advocate of online, but I think people have embraced that side of things
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certainly here as far as just having things delivered right to their door, but
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anyway. And I'm not necessarily saying you got to go to Walmart either.
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I'm not advocating doing all of your shopping there. I'm just going to be
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very curious. I do some of my grocery shopping at Walmart and get some
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of those other things that you need, and you know, I'm going to
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be in those lines at some point, and I'm just bracing myself for the
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chaos that will exist there. I want to talk this morning about something I've
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really dreaded this over the weekend, because this is one of those topics that
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it's never easy. It's a very sensitive subject, and it's something that people
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in our chain out of Houchi Valley area at least, have been talking about
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now for almost a week. And obviously there have been significant developments for this
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basically right before the weekend, and it's become a very tragic story. And
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I want to attempt to navigate through a little bit of this and try to
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keep my emotions in check, okay, because I think it's a very sad
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story, and I think anybody who sees it as anything other than a sad,
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tragic story is not looking at this thing quite through genuine unbiased glasses.
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Okay, I think that's the best way to say it. And I'm going
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to do my best to not pass any judgment because I think judgment is a
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key component of this story. And of course I'm talking about the story of
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Smith's Station or Bubba Copeland. A story was released. I guess it certainly
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became something that everyone was aware of early last week, and it was on
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a nonprofit news blog. Blog is the term for it. I guess I
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saw people trying to say, Oh, it's a news agency, and you
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know they cover news. I don't know that I would. I don't really.
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I don't know anything about them. They're based out of I think Birmingham,
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but I think they have reporters around Alabama. It's a nonprofit group I
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guess that does this, and the eighteen nineteen relates to when Alabama became a
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state and those sorts of things, so or the founding of Alabama whatever.
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So it's eighteen nineteen. News is the name of this company. And I
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have questions about exactly the way all of this came to be, and I
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think a lot of people have questions about how it got started. That's the
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biggest part of this whole story to me that I think we need answers for
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because I've seen some accusations about how this all came about, and I don't
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know if the accusations are true. If they are, and I don't want
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to dig into the gossip on this show necessarily. We'll see if it actually
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gets investigated. We'll see if anybody actually looks into this to try to find
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the truth. But I know that this story was released and it talked about
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now the former mayor of Smith's Station, Bubba Copeland, was by all accounts,
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really liked beloved by the people of Smith's Station. Obviously, it's a
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very small town in Alabama, so the I guess the interest in the story.
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You can kind of understand where it comes from because this is not something
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typical of a small town in Alabama to hear. And this is where it's
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going to be challenging because I'm gona try to do my best to walk through
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a little bit of this without really deep diving into all of the because there's
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a bit of hearsay in this. Now the article says that they vetted everything,
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and maybe they did. You know, you take news that it's there's
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always that opportunity for somebody to challenge it and say, well, some of
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this isn't true. I think some of the things that they did to handle
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it maybe they could have handled a little better. Starting with whether or not
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this is an actual news story. Again, I understand the interest. I
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don't know that it's news, and I guess that's the question it is now.
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Certainly when it was released, I don't know that it was news.
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But a beloved mayor in Smith Station, who by all the count ran a
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grocery store in Alabama, was the pastor at first Baptist Church in Phoenix City
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outside of you know, Smith's Station, but not far away for folks listening
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that don't know the area. And according to the story, you know,
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by day he was a business owner, a mayor, a pastor, and
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by night he was living a double life. He was pretending to be a
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trans woman and would go online. He would go into chat rooms like Reddit,
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he would go into account site on Instagram and would talk about his life
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as a trans woman. There were photos that were a screen captures from Reddit
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and screen captures from Instagram in places that showed the mayor in these outfits dressed
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as a woman at times clothing that there were photos of his wife wearing,
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so he and his wife in the same clothes, not in the same photo,
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but you know, his wife, his wife's clothes that he was wearing.
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And there were accusations of him writing fan fiction relating to the trans community,
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and you know, some scandalous things that were written, fictional things that
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were written. Where I think the lines kind of blur certainly is that in
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some accounts there were people referenced that lived in the in this area. There
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were photos that were used of people, and I guess by accounts they were
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at least at the time, I don't know the timeline on all of this,
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potentially under eighteen. And there were some cases, in one in particular,
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where a brother and sister there were photos used in a story or in
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a post to basically say that transitioning, getting the hormone treatments and getting implants.
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You can go from this to this. And it was a brother and
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a sister as the before and after. No one, neither of them have
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transitioned, neither of them have anything to do with this story other than they
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were sadly used as examples in this. And according to the story that this
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was a post that he made and he used the two as an example.
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Now, and this is, you know, for people I talked to that
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saw the story at the beginning, the photo that he used was republished by
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eighteen nineteen news with their faces visible. At some point when I saw the
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story, I saw that at least the boy's face had been blacked out and
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the story was reshared, and then eventually, I think at the request of
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the family I believe the father of the kids, both faces were blacked out.
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And I feel for them in all of this because they were dragged into
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something that obviously they had nothing to do with at all, and once this
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became a story that immediately caught wildfire in the community as people were talking about
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it, sadly they were dragged into it, and I think that's awful.
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I do think that's awful. I think it's awful that they were dragged into
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any of this in any capacity, And if all of that is true about
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both of their pictures being used by this news agency, they should have done
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better, like that's not the right way to handle that using their pictures.
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And eventually I guess they got there and got it right. So the story
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broke and people in the community were talking about it. I had many people
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send me clips to it. You're gonna be talking about this on your show,
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and I guess my first reaction was, what's the news story. I
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understand there's an interest from a gossip standpoint, here's a pastor and a mayor
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and a business owner that is living this double life. But I didn't understand
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the news angle. What was the legitimate piece of news that was here.
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I've worked in broadcast media for a really long time. For a good chunk
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of that, I worked on a news talk radio station. Even this show,
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at times, we cover news, and I try my best to approach
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things. I have my opinions, certainly, but when it's an actual news
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story, when I'm covering something like the COVID pandemic from the beginning, I
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did my best to put on my journalism hat and cover things from an unbiased
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standpoint. But more often than not, this is an opinion show, and
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what I've done for most of my time is cover things from an opinion standpoint.
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But you know, I had to cover nine to eleven when it happened,
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and I was working on a top forty radio station. So you're trying
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to do that using some bit of journalistic integrity. So my first question,
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just from the standpoint of journalistic integrity, is why was this news other than
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the fact that someone had the information and decided we're going to put it out
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there because it's going to be helpful to us. It's going to get us
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clicks, it's going to get us attention, it's going to get people talking
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about us, or a reporter saying it's going to get people talking about me.
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I mean, that's the benefit sometimes to stories like this. So I
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guess the question becomes what's the motivation for publishing the story? Because in some
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cases, you know, you get a new story and you think this has
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value to the community to know it, and maybe they could justify that.
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Maybe they could say it's important for the people in Smith's station to know that
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their mayor does this. It's important for people that attend First Baptist Church to
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know this. But is it really a news story. I have friends that
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work in media in the area throughout the parts of Alabama and Georgia, and
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newsrooms were conflicted on this. I think they probably understood there's value in having
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the cliques, but is it really news Is it worth subjecting this man to
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this because it's something that he was doing in his private life? War lines
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crossed, that's a whole separate conversation. We're laws broken, that's the question.
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If laws were broken, then it's news. And I don't know that
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we know any answers to that yet. I don't know that we really know
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exactly everything that was done. From this standpoint. As a reporter, your
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job should be find the news, don't just find the gossip. Find the
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news. Is it paparazzi to just report this? Or can you find the
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news? Was a law broken? If a law was broken, that's news.
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If someone just did something that you think that the people at First Baptist
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Church are going to find scandalous or offensive, you know, that's the kind
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of thing that happens within the church. That's the kind of thing the gossip
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that rolls from out the walls of the church, and it's something for them
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to decide. And if your thought is well, they need to know about
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it. But that's not what you didn't tell them. You tried to tell
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everyone and it caught wildfire. It put Bubba Copeland in a position where ultimately
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he referenced to and you hear from friend. Now I know. I knew
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Bubba. I interviewed him a number of times as the mayor of Smith's Station.
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There were incidents, we had tornadoes in the area, we had Hurricane
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Michael come through. He was someone that you reach out to when you need
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to talk about what's going on in Smith's Station or in the collective communities in
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East Alabama, and I did. I didn't talk to him once this news
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broke for a couple of reasons. First of all, I didn't know him
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well. I would have been comfortable calling him if it was some sort of
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a breaking news event that was happening in Smith's Station. But I didn't want
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him to think I was calling because I was looking for the gossip. Newsguy
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calls, talk show host calls. You might think, oh, no,
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here we go. But I was hearing from people who were close to him
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that he was in a dark place. And what I did was reach out
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to people I knew that were close to him to say, I just want
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to check on him. I want to know if he's okay, because this
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has got to be hard for him. It's got to be hard for his
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family, and it was too hard for him. I can only imagine what
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they're going through. So, Bubba Copelan took his life on Friday, it
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got to be too much. I don't know. I mean, I know
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some of the specifics about what happened, but I don't know if exactly what
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part of all of this was the part that was too much. So it's
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important for all of us to know a few things. One behaviors by people
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in the community, whether it starts and I don't want to point fingers,
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I don't want to do that. But digging into his personal life and putting
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it on blast, as the kids say, ultimately started this was it the
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right thing to do? I guess at some point the guy who wrote the
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article should probably be asked that question. I don't know what he's dealing with
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now. I don't know how he feels here on Monday morning after Bubba took
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his life on Friday. But I think that it's a fair question to ask.
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Was that the right thing to do? Was putting the story out the
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right thing to do? If they continue to dig and they find out that
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there was a reason that someone leaked this information about Bubba and that reason was
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somehow related to a crime. Then it's absolutely a news story. Does he
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know that there's more to this? And if he does, why didn't he
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report it in the beginning. Did any of these activities that was happening in
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the evenings did they break any laws? Were there any crimes committed? Or
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were there any ethical issues as it pertains to him being a mayor or a
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pastor. And I know a lot of people have had a number of thoughts
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about him being a Baptist minister in behaving way, and I understand that I
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do. I understand that. I understand that people think that he should have
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behaved differently than he did as a pastor or as a mayor. And my
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understanding is that he did submit a resignation letter to the church before he took
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his own life, and I think maybe, if that's true, he understood
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that he should have behaved differently as a pastor. And yes, that's a
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discussion that the community can have now about what the behaviors should have been.
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The sort of fiction that was being written, some of it they say X
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rated. I didn't read it. I don't know exactly what he wrote.
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Yes, those questions can be had, but if you go back to the
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origin of this, how much of all of this was a real news story,
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and how much bullying is someone expected to take. See we live in
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a society that says bullying is bad. Kids at school should never have to
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tolerate bullying. They shouldn't have to deal with it. I grew up sadly
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in a culture where bullying happened all the time. Did it toughen us up?
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I mean, I hate the thought of my kids being bullied. Everybody
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hates the thought of their kids being bullied. We know how it made us
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feel, and kids ultimately will experience it. They're going to go through it,
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They're going to see it happen. It's going to happen to them.
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How much bullying happens every day from the same people who say bullying is bad.
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We see it in our politics, We see it in our everyday lives.
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We don't treat each other the way that we would like to be treated.
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For someone to say this is a news story, I need to publish
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it, the question comes down to if it were you, would you want
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this story put out about you? If there's no real news value to it.
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If you heard the story and it was about you, would you want
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other people to share it and talk about it behind your back. There were
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people who reached out to Bubba and talk to him and let them know it's
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okay, we still care about you. Those people are hurting today. His
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family is hurting. The guy who wrote the article, I assume, is
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probably struggling and hurting today. I know some of the local media outlets were
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criticized for not covering it sooner. I applaud them for putting it on pause
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and waiting to find out what the news story was us. They were waiting
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for some sort of action. Was he going to step down as mayor?
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Was he going to step down as pastor? Was he gonna I don't know,
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close his business and get out of town. I mean, those things
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would have all been newsworthy. But just putting the story out to see what
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happened. I don't know that it's news. I don't think it is.
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Some people disagree with me, and that's okay, you can disagree, But
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I don't think it's news. Is it a scandal, Sure, absolutely,
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it is a scandal. It's pretty big scandal for a small town in Alabama.
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It's a big scandal. The article also, for some reason, had
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a picture of him with Donald Trump. I don't really understand that. That
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injects another layer to it. I know, you know, when there were
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tornadoes in the area and Trump came to visit, he took a picture with
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him. I mean, that's but that had to be injected into the story.
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I guess to add a little bit another layer to the whole thing.
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Then there's another layer to this. I saw that a press release was sent
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out by the Alabama Democrats, who seem to find a need to make this
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whole story about them. We're accepting of all people. We hate that this
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happened to Bubba Copeland. We're accepting of all people. Why why is this?
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What does this have to do with the Alabama Democrats? I mean,
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other than to try to make it some sort of a campaign thing to move
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forward. Hey, you live an alternate lifestyle, We're there for you.
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We welcome you in if you have an alternate lifestyle. It's a bizarre thing
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to do, isn't it. I mean, it's that whole don't waste a
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tragedy shameful to me. I don't know if I was an Alabama Democrat,
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maybe I'd feel differently, But it seems a bit shameful, doesn't it to
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try to turn this into something about them? So a community mourns this week,
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a family is destroyed and there are a number of lives affected, our
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community is affected, and all I can ask and I don't want to turn
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into Jerry Springer. I don't want to turn into that. But it ultimately
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comes down to don't we owe each other a little better? Can't we all
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be a little better towards each other? Can't we put ourselves in each other's
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shoes just a little bit. I'm not making a case for or against the
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behaviors of Bubba Copeland. That's now in the past. If we find out
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there were criminal acts taking place, then obviously that should be vetted. But
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just to cast judgment on something that he was doing in the evenings, living
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an alternate life, I'm not going to dive into that. At this point,
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the damage was done, his life was destroyed, and ultimately he thought,
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there's no alternative to this. I have to take my own life.
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My heart breaks for him. I think about his last hours and how horrible
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that must have been for him, what last week must have been like for
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him, and my heart breaks for him, and I pray for him.
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I pray for his family, I pray for that community that's been greatly impacted.
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And another reminder, there are people in your life right now that are
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struggling with very different things. But they're struggling with things, and they need
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to know that you're there for them. If things ever get out of hand
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and they start to have these dark thoughts, let them know that. Let
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the people in your life know that you're there for them and be prepared to
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do whatever you have to do to help them through it, because we owe
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that to each other. You two has a lyric in a song called One.
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You've probably heard the song. A lot of people miss quote one of
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the lyrics in the song. I would argue it's one of the best written
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songs in my lifetime as far as pop songs go, rock songs go.
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But in the song, often misquoted, he says we get to carry each
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other. A lot of people think it says we got to carry each other,
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like it's important that we carry each other. But the lyric is we
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get to carry each other. It's a privilege that we get to help one
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another. It's something that we get to do. It's not an obligation.
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I mean it is, but it's more than an obligation to help somebody through
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something. It's a privilege. It's a privilege to help someone in need.
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It's a privilege for us to benefit from it. They always say, you
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know, when you donate to charity, it rewards you for doing it.
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When you give your time, it rewards you. And that's absolutely the case.
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It's not an obligation. We've got to help other people. We get
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to help other people. It's rewarding for us. So just a reminder be
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there for those now moving forward. I had a friend who asked me,
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was there anything else I could have done for Bubba? Was there anything else
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I could have said? And I told her, no, you did what
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you could do. That's all that you could do. But you tried,
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right, you tried. That's all that we can do sometimes is be there
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you need somebody to come help, and they do those as well. Seven
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six three five eight forty five hundred seven O six three five eight forty five
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hundred O dccolumbus dot com. More West Carol Morning Show. Right after the
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break, Nine eight eight is the number to call for anybody who is in
31:47
need of crisis conversation. It's the suicide and crisis Lifeline. You can also
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text the number nine eight eight. And it's important that we know that one
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right, We know nine one one, We know four to one one we
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know some of those uh six one nine eight eight, something that we should
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all have readily available if we need it or someone close to us needs it.
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There's always another way. There's always another way that'll do it. For
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this Monday edition of the show, thanks to our sponsors and patrons. Thank
32:25
you for listening. I'll catch you back here tomorrow morning. This is the
32:30
West Carrol Morning Show powered by Overhead Door Company of Columbus, the Holiday Inn
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Resort in Panama City, and CSU's Coca Cola Space Science Center. Overhead Door
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Company of Columbus has all of your garage door needs covered. Residential and commercial
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service and repairs. If you need a new garage door, you're just looking
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to upgrade or repair your current door, Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you
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covered. Plus they've got your emergency repairs or service covered as well. Seven
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O six three five eight forty five hundred seven O six three five eight forty
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five hundred o dccolumbus dot com