Well, I've had pigs in the farmyard - some of them, some of them are alright
Well, he fucked me with his truncheon and his helmet was way too tight.
-- Rolling Stones
Let's see if we have this straight -- a ranking staffer in a doomed, foundering campaign suddenly finds his conscience. It's right down there where you left it, pal. No, over there. No, there. Under those shreds of credibility, asshole.
McKinnon helped organize McCain's last book tour and has traveled extensively with the senator, offering media advice to the candidate for much of the last year. But he wrote a memo to the campaign in January, explaining that he would quit if the general election pitted McCain against Obama. McKinnon wrote that while he opposed Obama's policies, especially on Iraq, he felt that the Illinois senator--as an African-American politician--has a unique potential to change the country. Therefore, McKinnon argued, he wanted no part in any efforts to tear down Obama's candidacy.
Well, isn't that special. Because when I see the name "Mark McKinnon", this is what comes to mind [emphases mine]:
Righteous rage -- that's what Hardy Billington felt when he heard about same-sex marriage possibly being made legal in Massachusetts. ''It made me upset and disgusted, things going on in Massachusetts,'' the 52-year-old from Poplar Bluff, Mo., told me. ''I prayed, then I got to work.'' Billington spent $830 in early July to put up a billboard on the edge of town. It read: ''I Support President Bush and the Men and Women Fighting for Our Country. We Invite President Bush to Visit Poplar Bluff.'' Soon Billington and his friend David Hahn, a fundamentalist preacher, started a petition drive. They gathered 10,000 signatures. That fact eventually reached the White House scheduling office.
By late afternoon on a cloudy Labor Day, with a crowd of more than 20,000 assembled in a public park, Billington stepped to the podium. ''The largest group I ever talked to I think was seven people, and I'm not much of a talker,'' Billington, a shy man with three kids and a couple of dozen rental properties that he owns, told me several days later. ''I've never been so frightened.''
But Billington said he ''looked to God'' and said what was in his heart. ''The United States is the greatest country in the world,'' he told the rally. ''President Bush is the greatest president I have ever known. I love my president. I love my country. And more important, I love Jesus Christ.''
The crowd went wild, and they went wild again when the president finally arrived and gave his stump speech. There were Bush's periodic stumbles and gaffes, but for the followers of the faith-based president, that was just fine. They got it -- and ''it'' was the faith.
And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.
So when a rented fuckhead like Mark McKinnon suddenly starts talking about his wanting to help change the country and not being part of any divisive rhetoric, it's important to know that he's made a lot of money and sucked up to a lot of power doing exactly that. He made it his mission to vocalize the ludicrous priorities of fag-obsessed, willfully ignorant goobers. He rode the cheap clichés of know-it-all city slickers with their fancy-pants ways pushing the poor-but-honest family farmer around his humble squat. He and his clients rode that schtick right into the White House -- twice -- to the clear detriment of the country, and he got paid. (Incidentally, although everyone's already read the Suskind piece, this Frontline interview with him is also great, and further illuminative of how these fuckers do things and clamp down on message control.)
McKinnon and his fellow putzes gleefully enabled this mendacious little simpleton, who continues to exude sheer contempt for the rule of law and the principles of democracy, who refuses to take the advice of the people's elected (if spineless) representatives on how to run his government. And suddenly these K Street dickheads aren't quite as sure about which way the wind is blowing, that they can't just strap on the kneepads and work the usual poles anymore. McKinnon especially, realizing that Poor Ol' Straight Talk's candidacy is a steaming pile of incoherent policies, obnoxious tics, and dyspeptic eruptions at his douchebag colleagues, has to be searching for higher ground.
And he'll probably find it; you never have to wait too long to find a Democratic contender who confuses "electability" with renting a slug like Mark McKinnon to try to teach them how peel a couple percent of the fucktard vote with the usual pantomimes and mumbo-jumbo. It never works, but they never learn, and the consultants keep getting paid anyway.
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