- Goldy | The Stranger
- Rob McKenna is no Tom Skerritt
While literally the entire Stranger staff was out boozing it up at the undoubtedly stupendous Tom Skerritt Happy Hour, fucking Dominic sent me to Sammamish High School in fucking Bellevue to cover Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna officially kick off his 2012 gubernatorial campaign. Well fuck me.
When I got there and tried to check in at the press table I was informed that I wasn’t on the list. “Did you RSVP?” the volunteer asked me. Of course not. How could I? I never got the invitation. An oversight, I imagined. So I cozied up to Washington State Republican Party chair Kirby Wilbur, and ultimately just walked into the auditorium with him. You know how it is… politics is politics, but all us failed talk radio hosts stick together.
An hour later, after McKenna had drained the battery on my camcorder with promises, platitudes, and unicorns, I was eager to ask him a few questions, like how he planned to pump an additional $3 billion into K-12 education without raising taxes? So I joined the P-I’s Chris Grygiel and PubliCola’s Josh Feit in walking down the hall to a scheduled press conference where I was unceremoniously stopped at the door. No campaign-certified press credential, no entry, I was told. When I asked campaign communications coordinator Adam Faber why Josh was invited and I was not, Faber made it clear that this slight was intentional. “We invited a very wide cast.” But, you know, not wide enough to include The Stranger.
Again, fuck me.
- Goldy | The Stranger
- Lots of white people and empty seats await Rob McKenna’s unsurprising announcement.
As for the speech itself, billions more for K-12 education… blah, blah, blah… hundreds of millions more for higher education… blah, blah, blah… less burden on small businesses… blah, blah, blah… there are too many state workers, and they make much too much money… blah, blah, blah… bipartisanship! The room full of white people just ate it up.
I’ll post more details and bit of analysis later, after I walk my dog, eat some dinner and edit some video.
She said caste? I mean cast maybe, but caste? Wow.
BREAKING: Lazy, “journalist” who can barely spell gets asked to leave press conference for not having proper credentials.
@2: Look at all the people in the photograph who lacked an invite but weren’t “kicked out”.
McKenna has nothing to gain from allowing the Stranger reporters at his events–Stranger readers weren’t going to vote for him anyway.
Thanks for taking the rhetorical bullet on this one for us, your loyal readers, Goldy. Sorry your overlords made you miss the Tom Skerritt function – that would’ve been the first Stranger event where you’d have known going into it you wouldn’t be the oldest one there!
@1, @2,
Hmm. Come to think of it, “caste” would kinda work equally well. But it’s good to see that you picked up on the most important issue here: my typo.
Squirrel!
Ugh, not looking forward to him beating Inslee or whomever next year. What a douchebag.
@4: Let us know what would happen if Breitbart was banned from Democratic pressers.
“The room full of white people just ate it up.”
So, kind of like a Stranger editorial meeting or its readership. BTW Goldy, you know Bellevue is more diverse than Cap Hill right?
@9: “BTW Goldy, you know Bellevue is more diverse than Cap Hill right?”
And yet, no diversity received the invite.
The Stranger/SLOG is a partisan publication. It regularly favors Democrats and lambasts Republicans regardless of the quality of the person or their statements.
Why should a Democrat publication be allowed into a Republican function?
@9, Well, Essex Porter was there. So I stand corrected.
@11,
Then why should the Seattle Times be invited to a Democratic function? And yet they are.
@ 11 He’s running as a candidate to govern the state, not for mayor of Pukeitallup.
@13: ZING
No, no, Goldy, I take SROTU’s point: propagandists get to speak only to toadies. It makes perfect sense, so long as you recognize that the whole enterprise is about marketing and not truthiness.
Moreover, only lickspittles are non-partisan. Anyone who may have even the tiniest furrow in his or her brow is, of course, a partisan, and can be safely ignored. Phew! For a moment there I thought I might have to think or something! LOLZ! Like THAT would happen!
Whole bunch of Dems are going down in 2012 because the figure heads of the party have been abandoning core Democratic values. In this case McKenna will be running, and probably winning, against the ghost of Gregoire! Neither Inslee nor anyone else is likely to be able to build up the street cred as a fight for the little guy Democrat after the state party supported Gregoire in flushing the state down the schools-kicking austerity budget sewer hole. Since Gregoire and the state Dems abandoned schools McKenna gets to run as a pro-school spending politician! Hilarious. The national GOP is poised to do this to the national Dems too, in every area where they have cave to the GOP.
@11: “Why should a Democrat publication be allowed into a Republican function?”
Is there any aspect of your life not dominated by propaganda?
#16
Look at one point the Nixon campaign realized that Hunter Thompson, a registered Republican, was not exactly reporting in their best interest and they took away his seat on the plane.
People aren’t dumb, you know.
“People aren’t dumb, you know.”
How else would you explain those Sarah Palin fuckwits who attempt to rewrite historical facts to match her grievous historical errors? Furthermore, how do you explain Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck? Michele Bachman? D U M B pretty much covers it for all of them, though they’ve also taken a good turn through the I G N O R A N T trough too.
@3: Nice fail.
“So I joined the P-I’s Chris Grygiel and PubliCola’s Josh Feit in walking down the hall to a scheduled press conference where I was unceremoniously stopped at the door. “
Goldy was kicked out of the press conference after, not the actual event.
You should apply for a job at the Stranger.
The real story here is Josh Feit’s long-term hard on for Rob McKenna. He thinks Rob is really smart, which is true. He also thinks McKenna is a moderate, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
That is why Josh gets in and Goldy doesn’t. Do a search of Josh’s posts on McKenna and you will see what I mean.
@19 Too bad Earl Butz [Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford] didn’t get that memo.
Butz resigned his cabinet post on October 4, 1976 after a second gaffe. News outlets revealed a racist remark he made in front of entertainer Pat Boone and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard a commercial flight to California following the Republican National Convention. The October 18, 1976 issue of Time reported the comment while obscuring its vulgarity:[4]
Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. When the conversation turned to politics, Boone, a right-wing Republican, asked Butz why the party of Lincoln was not able to attract more blacks. The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign. Butz said: “I’ll tell you what the coloreds want. It’s three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit.”
After some indecision, Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. But New Times magazine enterprisingly sleuthed out Butz’s identity by checking the itineraries of all Cabinet members.
the real story is the Nazis outflanked social democrats so McKenna surely can outflank Democrats
Where does the money for education come from if he has to never raise taxes? The people in that room would have voted for anything that stood up there and lied to them. McKenna is a joke candidate, and if he loses this race he’s just going to try the next closest thing. He doesn’t want to be governor, he wants power. He can’t even use the power he has now responsibly, the solution is not giving him more.
@25, I’m sorry it took 25 comments for someone to get to the point, which is not whether Goldy was slighted or not or whether Richard Nixon (!) anything anything. McKenna is laying on the standard Republican line: more services for less money. Spending goes up, taxes go down. That’s what people want to hear, that lunch is free. Reality doesn’t get invited to the press conference.
I’d love to see McKenna’s detailed response to the crisis that led to this year’s disaster of a budget. Not just rhetoric, but a line-by-line explanation of where the money was going to come from for what we have now, let alone billions more of it. There’s a reason Gregoire looks like she’s been hit by a truck; she pretty much has.
The bottom line is McKenna’s a liar.
@13 – I’ll be the Seattle Times never claimed that McKenna was transgendered.
bet
I think everyone is missing the obvious point. He’s a Republican with a capital R so he can solve anything by pointing out how wrong Obama is.
But excluding the stranger is a huge mistake since they hold such high opinion in Seattle.
And notice the median age in that photo.
My hunch is: The Stranger wasn’t allowed in given the past remarks that McKenna looks like a transgendered woman or something. I dunno.
Don’t feel bad, Goldy – I’d kick you out of my press conference too. I love you guys, but you wouldn’t know what journalism is if I let you Google the answer in advance.
Someone named “Goldy” whose stories seem to require a minimum of one “fuck” per paragraph. I wouldn’t let you in my press conference, either. And I despise McKenna. Grow up.
And to The Stranger editor: I’m actually interested in what you guys have to say about McKenna when you’re on top of your political game. So about assigning an adult to cover his campaign.
Get ready for “wasteful” service and revenue programs to be eliminated, including more cuts to schools. Worker’s comp? Privatized. Sin taxes? Forget those. Property taxes? NO MORE. Liquor sales? Nah. More lottery games? Yes! Those solve everything! They’re voluntary!
I think the key was that they were only inviting journalists, not juvenile, partisan hacks who think “advocacy journalism” means presenting information that only supports your agenda.
McKenna has absolutely no charisma. Hard to imagine him winning this election.
@26: “Reality doesn’t get invited to the press conference.”
Well done.
@36 but that would mean nobody from Faux News could show up, or Breitbart …
@19- Do you know how stupid the median person is? Half of people are dumber than that. Of course a substantial number of people are actually really fucking dumb. Many of them choose to be that way because being smart and responsible is hard work.
Please Ask All candidates If they support Marijuana legalization and ONLY VOTE FOR YES ANSWERS.