Meredith Oakley: Politicians didn’t get away with much

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For decades, for generations of Arkansas Democrat, and then Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, readers, Meredith Oakley was the lioness of Arkansas journalism. And she hunted.

Her column was an almost-daily feature of this paper. And for her day job, she ran the Voices page--like a drill sergeant. In fact, a smarty-pants editorial writer once told her, to her face, that she was like U.S. Army toilet paper: Rough, tough, and didn’t take much off anybody.

She beamed. She took it as the compliment it was meant to be. And it may have made her week, her month, her year. She repeated it several times that day to make sure others heard it. She seemed elated, encouraged by such descriptions.

She was certainly old school. And sometimes that was in the best way. As in old-school journalist. The only way she looked at politicians was down her nose. (Mencken, Henry Louis.) And she knew journalists--we’d say especially opinion journalists-can never be fully objective, so they must be fair. (Brinkley,