Final Word: Arizona, hide the crazy just a little longer

Now the debate begins about whether or not Arizona will recover from the bad press surrounding Senate Bill 1062.

Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed it Wednesday, as she knew she had to, but many wondered why it took her so long.

The fallout piled up from last Friday until Wednesday at 6 p.m., and a lot of it could have been avoided, many argue, if she had vetoed it right away or otherwise indicated her intention to. If she had, the 85 or so large companies who do business in and with the Valley wouldn’t have had the opportunity to criticize, cajole and threaten the state and its leaders with the possibility of taking their dollars and customers elsewhere.

But truthfully, she had until Saturday to do the right thing, so let’s not hold her to a higher standard because her veto wasn’t fast enough. She did the right thing, even if it was the ONLY real choice she had.

Sometimes you don’t get good choices in politics.

But let’s watch ourselves, shall we? The national media descended on the Valley this past weekend. They interviewed gays and lesbians, business owners and people who actually LOVED this bill.

Did you see the interview state Sen. Al Melvin did with CNN’s Anderson Cooper? If you didn’t, consider yourself lucky. That which you do not know cannot embarrass you.

But here’s the challenge, Arizona: Behave normally for the next 24 hours. Let the national press leave Arizona’s living room, and maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t look under the rug.

Maybe they won’t find out that at the Arpaio roast last weekend, state Rep. John Kavanagh let fly a few racial slurs of his own.

Maybe they won’t sit in on that hearing where our legislators debated the merits of arming our state’s teachers, while stripping the state of the Common Core Educational standards while the rest of the nation spends more per student than we do by far.

And what about the bill that was proposed to disallow anyone in the country illegally form using any public resources — including parks, roads, and public restrooms?

There are plenty of crazy things to look at here in Arizona, and you don’t have to look very far if you’re down at the Legislature right now. So, do me a solid would you? If you work for national media outlets, please do us a favor and move along, would you?

There’s nothing to see here.