Last week, notorious ratfink snitch Scott McClellan took the stage at Town Hall. McClellan was press secretary for George W. Bush's White House from 2003 to 2006, which you'd think would be a job for a photogenic man. But with his giant head, thinning hair, and tiny, finlike hands, McClellan resembles nothing so much as an enormous baby in a suit. His head is so gigantic that, even when he sits quietly, it trembles and shakes on his rounded shoulders like a bobblehead doll.

The liberal Town Hall crowd applauded McClellan because he wrote a book titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. It cautiously alleges the obvious: The United States government lied to its citizenry about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Some people are praising McClellan for being courageous. He isn't. And What Happened is not a good book. It's as bland, inoffensive, and generic as a political tell-all can be, and it contains exactly no insights or revelations. McClellan merely sold his story to the highest bidder because he is an opportunist and a fink.

In fact, McClellan is the worst kind of amoral snake-oil salesman, twisting with the shifting winds of public perception. If Bush's approval rating was above 50 percent, McClellan would still slither onto talk shows to praise the wisdom of the president's plan in the Middle East. He's the kind of idiot who actually says the word "irregardless" without any sense of irony.

But he does have the tireless, leg-humping energy of a used-car salesman, and I have never seen an author so shamelessly shill his work at every opportunity from the stage; practically every sentence referred back to his book, as though McClellan took a course on marketing before his appearance. He's obviously a spineless hack with a heart full of hate, but the Town Hall audience swallowed his bullshit so eagerly, their tickets should've come with bibs.

McClellan claimed What Happened didn't come out until the dying days of the Bush administration because "I just needed time to decompress and get away from it all." He pronounced that his "loyalties lie with the American people" (applause) and that his "loyalties lie to the truth," (more applause), identifying him as a man who can't even talk about truth and loyalty without unconsciously pairing it with the word "lie." The 850 people in attendance either didn't notice or were so swept up in the narrative that they didn't care. In the end, they gave the filthy fucker a standing ovation. recommended

pconstant@thestranger.com