Post by ck4829 on Mar 16, 2017 13:17:14 GMT
Professional Victim Pat McCrory Has Slid Into Paranoia and Delusions of Grandeur
Pat McCrory was supposed to have another job by now. After voters tossed the former Republican North Carolina governor out of office—thanks in large part to HB2, the deeply unpopular anti-LGBTQ bill he championed—McCrory groveled at Trump Tower, clearly expecting a consolation prize from the new president. But here we are in mid-March, and Donald Trump, who famously dislikes losers, has yet to offer him a role in the new administration.
Bereft of employment, McCrory has slid into the role of professional victim, blaming his humiliating downfall on LGBTQ advocates, corporations, protesters, nonprofits, athletic leagues, transgender children, “silent” conservatives, and pretty much everyone but himself. Recently, he took his tearful tirade to the podcast Listening In, whining to host Warren Cole Smith, who is best known for declaring that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism made him unfit for public office. The interview provides a fascinating glimpse into McCrory’s troubled mind, revealing that he veers between extreme paranoia and rather piteous delusions of grandeur. Here are some highlights from McCrory and Smith’s 20-minute conversation.
...
The Human Rights Campaign led the public opposition to HB2, criticizing the bill for barring transgender people from certain public bathrooms. In his interview, McCrory repeatedly blamed the HRC for his defeat, asserting that the group is “more powerful than NRA.”
“I said that nine months ago and everyone laughed,” McCrory confided in Smith, “and now everyone’s going, ‘you know, maybe they are,’ because they put their pressure on corporations. The NRA puts pressure on politicians. The HRC puts public pressure, threatened boycotts on major corporations through the U.S. with a false narrative, and it worked.”
(For the record, the NRA also “puts pressure” on corporations, boycotting any gun manufacturers that agree to make firearms safer.)
...
“It’s almost Orwellian,” McCrory told Smith, “that if you disagree with the thought police, the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil. It’s almost as though I broke a law!”
(A federal judge has found that McCrory’s HB2 did literally break the law.)
“As you know,” McCrory said, “during my tenure in … government, one thing you never questioned was my ethics. Or my values. And I do what I think is right. And yet these new thought police now are saying just the opposite. And it’s a bad part of our nation going on right now. You see the same techniques being used against Trump right now.”
Actually, McCrory’s governorship was plagued with ethics scandals. Most notoriously, McCrory’s administration appeared to dole out favors to Duke Energy, where the governor worked for 29 years. In June 2015, two weeks after the company agreed to pay a $102 million fine for illegally dumping tons of coal ash into the Dan River, McCrory had dinner with its CEO at the governor’s mansion. And just four days after that meeting, his administration granted the company new permits for coal ash storage. Then, in July 2016, McCrory signed a law—late on a Friday afternoon—allowing Duke Energy to leave the toxic coal ash in place for an extended period of time.
Incidentally, McCrory also failed to disclose his ownership of Duke Energy stock while in office. He claimed that the disclosure form was too confusing.
...
According to McCrory, LGBTQ activists have an “agenda—and that is changing the definition of gender.”
“Instead of having doctors determine the definition of gender,” he told Smith, “they actually want politicians to determine the definition of gender. … On the issue of gender, I think it’s a well-established definition: It’s the doctor who determines the gender of a baby. You ask the doctor, is it a boy or a girl. You don’t ask the baby! Should we have fifth-graders decide what gender they are? I just think it’s common sense. I’m a pragmatic conservative. Now I’m called an extremist and a radical. This is part of their agenda.”
The twistifications and contradictions of this statement are really quite incredible. Here is Pat McCrory—a man who signed a bill that defined gender as the “biological sex” recorded on a birth certificate—proclaiming that “politicians” should not “determine the definition of gender.” The entire purpose of HB2 was to determine the definition of gender! That was its explicit intent! HB2 literally codified Republican politicians’ cramped understanding of gender into law!
Does McCrory simply not know what HB2 did? Has he read it? Has he read a summary of it? It is breathtaking to hear him disparage politicians defining gender when he, Pat McCrory, is indisputably the person most closely associated with politicians defining gender. And how, after nearly a year of litigation over the bill, does he still not comprehend gender identity? What would he recommend doctors do to children who identify with a gender other than the one listed on their birth certificate? Subject them to conversion therapy? How would he recommend doctors classify children born intersex? McCrory says gender is just “common sense.” If that’s true, he should be able to answer these questions easily.
www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/03/14/pat_mccrory_a_paranoid_delusional_professional_victim.html
Pat McCrory was supposed to have another job by now. After voters tossed the former Republican North Carolina governor out of office—thanks in large part to HB2, the deeply unpopular anti-LGBTQ bill he championed—McCrory groveled at Trump Tower, clearly expecting a consolation prize from the new president. But here we are in mid-March, and Donald Trump, who famously dislikes losers, has yet to offer him a role in the new administration.
Bereft of employment, McCrory has slid into the role of professional victim, blaming his humiliating downfall on LGBTQ advocates, corporations, protesters, nonprofits, athletic leagues, transgender children, “silent” conservatives, and pretty much everyone but himself. Recently, he took his tearful tirade to the podcast Listening In, whining to host Warren Cole Smith, who is best known for declaring that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism made him unfit for public office. The interview provides a fascinating glimpse into McCrory’s troubled mind, revealing that he veers between extreme paranoia and rather piteous delusions of grandeur. Here are some highlights from McCrory and Smith’s 20-minute conversation.
...
The Human Rights Campaign led the public opposition to HB2, criticizing the bill for barring transgender people from certain public bathrooms. In his interview, McCrory repeatedly blamed the HRC for his defeat, asserting that the group is “more powerful than NRA.”
“I said that nine months ago and everyone laughed,” McCrory confided in Smith, “and now everyone’s going, ‘you know, maybe they are,’ because they put their pressure on corporations. The NRA puts pressure on politicians. The HRC puts public pressure, threatened boycotts on major corporations through the U.S. with a false narrative, and it worked.”
(For the record, the NRA also “puts pressure” on corporations, boycotting any gun manufacturers that agree to make firearms safer.)
...
“It’s almost Orwellian,” McCrory told Smith, “that if you disagree with the thought police, the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil. It’s almost as though I broke a law!”
(A federal judge has found that McCrory’s HB2 did literally break the law.)
“As you know,” McCrory said, “during my tenure in … government, one thing you never questioned was my ethics. Or my values. And I do what I think is right. And yet these new thought police now are saying just the opposite. And it’s a bad part of our nation going on right now. You see the same techniques being used against Trump right now.”
Actually, McCrory’s governorship was plagued with ethics scandals. Most notoriously, McCrory’s administration appeared to dole out favors to Duke Energy, where the governor worked for 29 years. In June 2015, two weeks after the company agreed to pay a $102 million fine for illegally dumping tons of coal ash into the Dan River, McCrory had dinner with its CEO at the governor’s mansion. And just four days after that meeting, his administration granted the company new permits for coal ash storage. Then, in July 2016, McCrory signed a law—late on a Friday afternoon—allowing Duke Energy to leave the toxic coal ash in place for an extended period of time.
Incidentally, McCrory also failed to disclose his ownership of Duke Energy stock while in office. He claimed that the disclosure form was too confusing.
...
According to McCrory, LGBTQ activists have an “agenda—and that is changing the definition of gender.”
“Instead of having doctors determine the definition of gender,” he told Smith, “they actually want politicians to determine the definition of gender. … On the issue of gender, I think it’s a well-established definition: It’s the doctor who determines the gender of a baby. You ask the doctor, is it a boy or a girl. You don’t ask the baby! Should we have fifth-graders decide what gender they are? I just think it’s common sense. I’m a pragmatic conservative. Now I’m called an extremist and a radical. This is part of their agenda.”
The twistifications and contradictions of this statement are really quite incredible. Here is Pat McCrory—a man who signed a bill that defined gender as the “biological sex” recorded on a birth certificate—proclaiming that “politicians” should not “determine the definition of gender.” The entire purpose of HB2 was to determine the definition of gender! That was its explicit intent! HB2 literally codified Republican politicians’ cramped understanding of gender into law!
Does McCrory simply not know what HB2 did? Has he read it? Has he read a summary of it? It is breathtaking to hear him disparage politicians defining gender when he, Pat McCrory, is indisputably the person most closely associated with politicians defining gender. And how, after nearly a year of litigation over the bill, does he still not comprehend gender identity? What would he recommend doctors do to children who identify with a gender other than the one listed on their birth certificate? Subject them to conversion therapy? How would he recommend doctors classify children born intersex? McCrory says gender is just “common sense.” If that’s true, he should be able to answer these questions easily.
www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/03/14/pat_mccrory_a_paranoid_delusional_professional_victim.html
