St. Louis Gunhumpers Cosplay As Selves At Campaign Event

Only this time, not barefoot.

Sunday was the one-year anniversary of that time when St. Louis couple Patricia and Mark McCloskey figured waving guns around was the most reasonable reaction to a group of Black Lives Matter protesters marching past their house on the way to somewhere else. To mark the occasion, which they probably think will be a national holiday some great day in the future, they held a sad slob picnic/campaign rally in a parking lot. It wasn't even the parking lot of a landscaping business that sounded like a hotel, just a closed outlet mall that's being redeveloped as a "mixed-use retail and sports property."

As you'll recall, Mark McCloskey is running for US Senateon a compelling platform of having been on TV waving a gun. If you haven't read the ' hilarious write-up of the event by Daniel Hill of the Riverfront Times, be sure to treat yourself.

McCloskey's campaign is fueled by the hottest commodities on the Right these days: white grievance and an inflated sense of victimhood. But even so, it seems none of the big rightwing figures they'd announced would be at the event actually showed up. The Riverfront Times reports McCloskey couldn't sell many tickets for the event, so it was opened up to whatever parts of the public wanted to hear a bunch of nobodies with internet "radio shows" gripe about all the things Fox News gripes about during the week: "critical race theory," the woke mob, Ashli Babbitt's status as a beloved martyr, and Joe Biden's status as a far left communist socialist far leftist.

The McCloskeys had originally said Gen. Michael Flynn would be there, but he was swapped out for Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who was also a no-show. Instead, it was a slate of raving dorks no one has heard of unless they're devotees of small rightwing media outlets. And what nice people they were! The show was emceed by former St. Louis radio talk show host Jamie Allman, who was shitcanned in 2018 after playfully suggesting on Twitter that he'd "ram a hot poker up David Hogg's ass" because the 17-year-old Parkland survivor had said unkind things about the Holy Second Amendment. (But it wasonly a joke, so it was funny , stupid libs!).

In place of major rightwing figures, the rally featured a bunch of local zeroes:

There was federally charged St. Louis chiropractor Eric Nepute, best-known for recommending Schweppes tonic water as a COVID-19 cure early on in the pandemic; JeffCo gun store owner Ian McFarland, who recently sold McCloskey a new gun when the latter handed his over to the state after pleading guilty to the crimes he'd committed; and State Rep. Nick Schroer (R-O'Fallon), one of the legislators leading an effort that failed in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood in the state. Pillow magnate and unhinged lunatic Mike Lindell piped in a prerecorded message of support, as did war criminal Oliver North, probably as a consolation prize since Flynn was presumably too busy plotting out his own future crimes to make an appearance.

And of course the McCloskeys were there, dressed up in outfits resembling what they wore the day they "protected" their expensive mansion from people who were passing by on the way to protest at the mayor's home and wouldn't have paid a bit of attention to the McCloskeys if they hadn't gone out to wave guns around.

Rather than mention that they'd pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and had to surrender their guns as part of the plea deal, Mark McCloskey insisted that were it not for their heroic gun brandishing, the protesters who were going elsewhere — aka, the "violent mob" -- would surely have murdered both the McCloskeys, their dog, and probably everyone else in St. Louis, too, and also burned their palace to the ground. As Hill points out, it's a weird claim, "seeing as how literally none of McCloskey's neighbors did the same and yet they all somehow came out unscathed." OK Mr. Smart Guy, but what if the McCloskeys' quick gun-waving also saved the whole neighborhood from the crazed mob?

Oh, OK, sure, there's the small matter that in a statement after the McCloskeys took the plea deal, special prosecutor Richard Callahan wrote that

"The protesters on the other hand were a racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children, who simply made a wrong turn on their way to protest in front of the mayor's house," noting further that absolutely no evidence was ever found to show that any of the protesters were armed or intent on harming the couple.

Well see, that statement right there notes that it was a "racially mixed" group, and we bet that's all the proof McCloskey and his dozens of supporters at the rally needed to know. By pure coincidence, Hill notes, the political figures Mark McCloskey praised were all white, and those he demonized happened to be Black, not that that could possibly be significant, heavens perish the thought.

The rally, such as it was, ended with the McCloskeys waving around a substitute AR-15 onstage, their original guns from last year having been seized and destroyed per the plea deal. The great thing about America is that there are always more guns, hooray! Indeed, says Hill, the McCloskeys serve only as a sort of synecdoche for the real star of the show, the eternal holy Gun:

One gets the distinct impression that those cheers were more for the gun itself than its owner though, and that more likely than not the crowd would probably prefer to vote for an actual firearm to be senator instead, if only there was some way to get one on the ballot.

 "The gun is good! ... The Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill!"

Sadly, the event appears to have lacked a Zardoz gun dispenser. Maybe if the McCloskeys can get Alex Jones for the next big event.

[ Riverfront Times / KSDK-TV ]

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