Nostalgia is a peculiarly human emotion. We look back at photos of ourselves from high school or college with amazement. Those baby pictures of our kids melt our hearts. A song on the radio or the aroma of a favorite recipe can bring a flood of memories.
Thus it is with some editorials that we reread years later. Like that one from 2007 — a decade ago, but like yesterday — when we scolded legislators for wasting time trying to dictate the punctuation of the possessive form of our state’s name — officially Arkansas’s rather than Arkansas’ (which Arkansas Business and The Associated Press prefer).
Oh, for those simpler days, when the legislation lawmakers were wasting time on was harmless and easily ignored.
Now, for reasons that cannot be practical, a couple of legislators are trying to bring to Arkansas all the consequences of a “bathroom bill” like that adopted in North Carolina to force transgendered persons to use public restrooms that correspond with the sex on their birth certificates. Even Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a lifelong conservative and a team player, says there’s no need to step in that mess. The new Trump administration has already begun walking back the Obama-era directive that created uproar in school restrooms and locker rooms.
Meanwhile, the state that rushed to the front of the bathroom line, North Carolina, is finding it hard to extricate itself from the backlash. Businesses have backed out of locating there because of the controversial policy and, as far as we can tell, no businesses have chosen to become Tar Heels specifically because of the law. Hundreds of millions of dollars of direct impact have been calculated — a rounding error in the state’s GDP, but a number that will only get larger.
As was the case 10 years ago, there are bigger fish for the Legislature to fry, real problems in search of real solutions rather than grand solutions in search of minuscule problems.