HOUSEHOLDER SENTENCED: What will it mean for Ohio's wild television population?
A federal judge today sentenced former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to 20 years in prison following his conviction in the largest public corruption scandal in state history. While many are calling this a win for justice, it also portends problems in terms of Ohio’s rapidly rising population of wild televisions.
Like any state, Ohio periodically experiences cycles where certain species become overpopulated, such as deer, coyote and Steelers fans. In every case except the latter, state officials can relax hunting restrictions on those species in an effort to return the population to a manageable level. Thanks to years of big-money lobbying, Steelers fans enjoy stronger legal protections.
Over the past two decades, Ohio has seen an explosion in the population of wild televisions, a fact some analysts attribute to the proliferation of the 24-hour news cycle and, more recently, the birth of approximately 436 different streaming services.
Whatever the reason, they have become a nuisance to countless families across the Buckeye State. “They’re such a pain,” said Cynthia Milligan of Bidwell. “My husband and I like to spend evenings on the porch watching the sunset. But at least three nights a week are interrupted by the noise of some infomercial – usually OxyClean. I’ve heard that damn program so many times I feel like Billy Mays is part of the family, rest his soul. And what’s worse, during commercials the volume jumps up so loud that our dogs are scared stiff to go outside.”
One culprit for the population growth was that many parents didn’t have time – or simply didn’t want – to spend hours entertaining their kids, so they’d get the TVs as pets. But as the kids graduated to bigger and better things, like iPhones and drugs, the TVs lost their utility, so the careless parents would merely release the poor things into the wild.
“It would be one thing if we were dealing with 75-inch, smart flatscreens or something,” said Mary Mertz, Director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “We could at least perhaps turn those into a tourist attraction, like an electronic petting zoo. But in Ohio, we’re still dealing with those huge tube TVs that went out of style in 2004. Here we are, trying to market Ohio as a modern, forward-looking state, and those ancient TVs sprinkling our woods and plains aren’t helping.”
Enter Larry Householder. While at first glance he looks more the bumbling-and-stumbling type, when it came to shooting TVs, there was nobody better. Combining patience with precision, Householder mowed down thousands in his day. By the end of a hunting session, a field that hours earlier had been littered with old TVs was picked clean.
“The great thing about Larry was that, after he was done shooting, he would have his minions go out and clean up the mess,” Mertz said. “That’s the biggest thing when it comes to TV-hunting. The splattered organs of a television can take centuries to decompose, so you have to clean up the scene when you’re done. That’s what turns most people off. But not Larry.”
In fact, in 2018 Householder turned his skill into a campaign ad when running for state representative, titled “Stick to Your Guns” (featured above). The TV in that ad was just one of Larry’s many victims over the years.
At the time, Ohio’s TV population seemed to be under control. But ever since federal agents arrested Householder in 2020, stripping his access to firearms, wild televisions have slowly crept back into Ohio’s ecosystem and today are as big a problem as ever.
Having Householder locked up for 20 years isn’t going to make things any easier, Mertz admitted. “Looks like we’re just going to have to get creative,” she said, pulling an AK-47 out the bed of her pickup.