http://www.charlotteobserver.com/...
Facts up here, irritable rant with bad language below the squiggle. (And above!)
NC Governor McCrory, or the Lord High McAss as we can call him from here on out, took his royal self to a boutique grocery store in Charlotte to do some shopping. Apparently he took his retinue with him. A store cook, Drew Swope, offered to help McAss but when he recognized His Assness, snapped, "Thanks for nothing" and walked off.
McAss was yea verily offended, and did scream at the store employee. He and his entourage complained to the store owner, who fired the poor bastard.
First off: It was Swope's job to wait on a customer, regardless of who it was. He didn't do his job by refusing to serve McAss. I can understand this being a firing offense, though I would hope a decent boss would have settled for a reprimand and maybe sending him home for the day to cool off and think about his failure to do his job properly. Swope is 45, and most likely has a family he helps support; he needs that job. And yes, he should have done his job.
Now. We expect our political leaders to handle criticism from the elements of the public that don't like them. I'm remembering how "Joe the Plumber," the racist shitbag whose name isn't Joe and who isn't a plumber, got in presidential candidate Obama's face for several minutes of ranting and spit-spraying. I'm remembering how calmly Obama handled the verbal assault. This is not what the Lord High McAss did. He screamed back at the guy, and he and his goons tore their elevated asses off to the store owner to complain. They got the guy fired.
They then went after Swope some more. They scoped out his Facebook account, and found references to Swope saying how he'd like to kick an effigy of McAss in the nuts. When the PR goons talked to reporters about it, they transformed that comment into "threatening the governor with physical harm." They also said, apparently with no support from anyone else, that Swope made an "obscene gesture" at McAss. So they piled on a bunch of shit on Swope after getting him fired, apparently to convince readers that Swope was such a jerk that McAss's extreme reaction was justified.
I hope several things happen from this. I hope some decent employer steps up and gives Swope a better job -- and that Swope learns to do his job even when faced with a puling, self-entitled little fuck like McAss. Secondly, I hope the PR backlash against McAss is enormous. He could have acted like a governor, the elected leader of a state, instead of like a butthurt little Lord Fauntleroy who took offense when a peon dared to say something negative to him, and using his position to exact an outsized revenge.
But, of course, that isn't McAss. We know that McCrory spent the majority of a lengthy interview with a Charlotte reporter whimpering and bitching about the mean things people say about him.
When I sat next to him at a recent breakfast, he tugged on my sleeve every couple of minutes, leaned over and murmured his displeasure with this cartoon or that editorial or a news story from six months ago. ... What is remarkable is that after 24 years in public life, McCrory fills a role that inevitably will elicit ongoing criticism yet he is as sensitive to it – no, personally hurt by it – as someone entering public life for the first time.
Not like "someone entering public life for the first time." Like a feudal lord who expects nothing but fawning, servile kowtowing from the unwashed masses, and exacts swift and sulky revenge when he doesn't get it.
A decent person would have never done what Lord McAss did. A half-decent person and a half-smart politician would make amends, apologizing for his end of the situation and asking that the store owner consider rehiring Swope. McAss won't do it. He will huddle on a throne that is far too big for him, reliving the moment over and over, grinning at the revenge he was able to exact, but spending far more time pawing over the offense, reliving the "hurt" to his lordliness over and over again, and sulking.
What a McAss.