A touch of mad dog disease has struck the electoral process in Missouri.
   Aptly named Martin "Mad Dog" Lindstedt filed a lawsuit in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri against Secretary of State Matt Blunt, who he claims refused to allow him to be on the ballot with his nickname.
   Lindstedt, a Granby resident, is running against Blunt in next month's Republican gubernatorial primary. The lawsuit is titled "Martin 'Mad Dog" Lindstedt, Republican Candidate for Governor of Missouri" vs. Matt 'Runt' Blunt, Secretary of State and Chief Election Official of Missouri, and Rival Republican Candidate for Governor of Missouri."
   Lindstedt claims his problems with Blunt date back to Lindstedt's previous candidacy for U.; S. Senate two years ago. Blunt did not permit him to use his nickname on the ballot that time either. Blunt has also refused both times to list Lindstedt's website on the list of official candidates, according to the lawsuit. which was filed July 21.
   Lindstedt acknowledges that it is too late to get the ballots changed or to get his website listed, so he has asked the court to "punish" Blunt by "having his nickname of Matt 'Runt' Blunt placed on the general election ballot if defendant wins the Republican primary" and that a link leading to this lawsuit be placed on the secretary of state's website.
   In his complaint, Lindstedt says he has not tried to hire a lawyer for this case. "(I) barely have $150 to pay for filing this case. That wouldn't buy an hour of lawyer time. Plus, this is an unusual case and (I haven't) heard of the like so why have a lawyer screw it up?"
   Anyone who would like to have a copy of the lawsuit sent to you, e-mail me at rturner229@hotmail.com
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   More developments in the Donald Peckham case, according to this morning's Joplin Globe. It appears that the Sarcoxie minister, who is in the Jasper County Jail in lieu of bond on statutory sodomy charges, has a decades-long history of such behavior with young boys during the times he was a pastor for the United Methodist Church at various Kansas posts.
   :It appears also that his wife has been very aware of his behavior and has been enabling him. This reminds me of an investigative series I worked on 10 years ago at The Carthage Press.
   I don't remember now why I was at the Lamar Country Club that afternoon, though I am absolutely sure it wasn't to attend any ritzy party, since that isn't exactly my scene. I was approached by a woman who worked at Barton County Memorial Hospital. She told me that the women who worked at the hospital were continually harassed by the hospital administrator, Dewey Smith, She said the harassment involved about two dozen female employees, but most of them were afraid they would lose their jobs if they complained. She said some of them were considering taking legal action against Smith. I told her to let me know if they did.
   I received word a few weeks after that. A woman called me, she wouldn't give me her name, but she said the lawsuit had been filed in U.S. District Court. At that time, court cases were not on the Internet, so I called Paul Stevens, then as now head of the Associated Press Bureau in Kansas City, and asked if one of his people could pick up a copy of the lawsuit and fax it to me. I received it about 90 minutes later.
   My first story came strictly from the lawsuit. Eight women were suing Smith and the hospital's board of trustees.Smith was accused of propositioning the women, making lewd remarks to them, telling "disgusting sexual jokes" and constantly using sexual innuendo. When I called him to ask him about the suit, he said, "I don't know anything about it."
   The lawsuit was filled with specific complaints against the administrator. He asked one employee what she would be willing to do for $100. He pinned another woman up against a dishwasher...in full view of other employees. One woman said that he told her in detail about a pornographic movie that had "accidentally" come on his television the previous evening. Another woman said Smith pinched her breast and rubbed against her breasts on several occasions.
   One woman claimed he made obscene phone calls and had exposed himself to her.
   The initial story was bad enough. What happened after that was unbelievable.
   I am sure the Globe is going through the same thing right now. It is amazing how people can be blinded sometimes. "Oh, why won't they leave that poor man alone." And, of course, there are other people who feel sorry for the family. That was always my biggest problem. I never failed to go through with an investigative piece, but I never stopped thinking about the families, the people who didn't deserve what was happening to them.
   That was what I heard about Dewey Smith and his family. The Board of Trustees took an approach that was also typical and it exactly what Peckham's church members are doing now in Sarcoxie. It's not the pedophile minister's fault or the lecherous hospital administrator, it's the media's fault.
   I checked into Dewey Smith's background, calling people at the various hospitals where he had served as administrator. Two nurses confirmed to me that he had problems while he was at Ottawa, KS and one of them sent me a signed affidavit from a third female employee whom he had harassed. I also received confirmation from two former hospital board members.
    Then I discovered that Smith had been fired at Aurora Community Hospital in 1981 for sexual harassment. "He tried to make all the girls," a hospital board member told me. Smith's tenure at Aurora lasted only four months.  
   The Barton County Hospital Board President told me that the board had done a thorough  check on Smith's time at Ottawa and Aurora and I should be ashamed for causing problems for "such a good man."
   Eventually, the "good man" resigned and the hospital settled with the eight women for $369,000.
   I don't know if Dewey Smith ever found another hospital position. He died a few years back.
   I remember how the local newspaper in Lamar, the Lamar Democrat, never wrote anything about the case, except a couple of brief statements from the hospital, until Smith was finally fired. The Democrat had a chance to do what a local newspaper should do...investigate problems within the community. Instead, the publisher and editor decided to follow the good-old-boy network. Any bad news reflects badly on the whole town.
   All I know is, after that time, women were treated as human beings and not sex objects at Barton County Memorial Hospital.
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   Another Lamar note- According to the Monett Times, John Jungmann, who wrote sports for me during the year that The Lamar Press was in business, has been named Monett Middle School principal.
***
   The Carthage square livened up for a couple of minutes this afternoon when a small parade featuring members of the 203rd (back from Iraq) make one quick jaunt around it before attending a rally at Memorial Hall. Some people were out waving small flags and all of the flags were flying proudly.
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   On a personal note, I am expecting to hear sometime in the next few days about an apartment in Joplin. Hopefully, I can be moved before teachers go back to work on Aug. 12. The worst part of the job is the driving. When I first rented my apartment on the Carthage square, I was only a couple of blocks from The Carthage Press office. It's not quite as convenient any more.
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   I'm a little behind on my movie reviews, so here goes:
   Tonight's movie was a 1953 western, "Garden of Evil" with Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, and Richard Widmark. It was okay, but nothing special. The plot featured Miss Hayward's character asking three men, played by Cooper, Widmark and Cameron Mitchell to accompany her to a gold mine to rescue her trapped husband. It takes them a while to get there, it takes them a while to get back, and they don't all make it. I've seen it before, and except for Widmark, nobody really comes out very well.
   Other movies I have watched the past few days include:
   KID FROM LEFT FIELD- This 1953 movie, actually expects us to believe that a nine-year-old boy could be hired to manage a major league baseball team. The managing is actually being done behind the scenes by the boy's father, the stadium peanut vendor and a former big leaguer, played by Dan Dailey. I never cared much for Dan Dailey. The talented Anne Bancroft is wasted. The actor who played the little boy (and I'm not going to look it up) did a good job, and so did Lloyd Bridges, playing a washed up third baseman.
   THE RAINMAKER- This 1956 movie (not the 90s one based on a John Grisham novel) was the only one pairing two great actors, Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. Lancaster plays Bill Starbuck, a con man who claims he can bring rain to a drought-ridden Midwestern town. He greatly affects the life of the Curry family, especially the daughter, Lizzie, played by Miss Hepburn, and the youngest son, played by Earl Holliman. Those two have had their dreams dashed by their brother Noah, played by Lloyd Bridges.It looked as if the cast had a ball and I did, too, I haven't seen this movie in a long time and it was well worth watching.
   JERRY MAGUIRE- Yes, I do watch recent movies, just not very often.This is not a great movie, but it's a darned good one. Tom Cruise can act and he does so extremely well in this movie as the title character, a sports agent who is fired by his company and tries to make do with just one client, an eccentric Arizona Cardinals wide receiver, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., who won the Academy Award for this performance. Renee Zellweiger made her film debut as Cruise's love interest and it was a spectacular one.
   THIS GUN FOR HIRE- This 1942 classic was Alan Ladd's first major role (his first actual role was in Citizen Kane the year before as a reporter) Ladd plays a cold-blooded hired killer whose only redeeming virtue is his love for cats. He murders a man and a woman at the beginning of the movie, then is paid off by a sinister businessman, played by Laird Cregar (actor Raymond Burr's real-life brother). What Ladd doesn't know is that Cregar has paid him off in bills stolen in a recent robbery. When Ladd finds out he has been doublecrossed, all hell breaks loose. He teams with a nightclub entertainer, played by Veronica Lake, to get Cregar and whoever the big boss is. The nominal leads of the movie are Miss Lake and Robert Preston, who plays her boyfriend a police. Never has a leading man done so little for a movie. Watch this one and you'll why Ladd was a star for more than two decades and would have been even bigger if he had done more movies like this one and "Shane."
   HOMBRE- In this 1967 movie, Paul Newman plays a white man who was raised by Indians. Somehow, he winds up on a stagecoach with a Mexican driver, a government official, played by Fredric March, who has been stealing from the Indians, a bad man played by Richard Boone, a young married couple, the government official's wife, and a woman who has been around (but, of course, she has a heart of gold). This was a good character study and as always, Newman is great.
  
  

   But this Donald Peckham case definitely reminds me