NEW YORK—I’m gonna explain this Pat McCrory thing to you.
As his world crumbles around him, Pat McCrory keeps doubling down on the “Keep Our Public Bathrooms Safe” issue.
Surely the man knows he’s losing.
So you may be wondering: Is he insane?
Doesn’t he have some lobe in the Political Survival region of his brain with a neon sign blinking “Bail Out! Seek Refuge! Career Killer Ahead!”
Doesn’t he know this is one of those public Dogpile Jamborees that stays with you the rest of your life and goes on your tombstone?
And yet he keeps churning away. He keeps saying that the nation’s “liberal agenda” is driving his agony. He believes, apparently, that Fortune 500 companies, professional sports leagues, and coaches who belong to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes are all part of the vast “Punish North Carolina” conspiracy, just because we Carolinians are not politically correct.
Myths, Misunderstandings and Outright lies about owning Gold. Are you at risk?
He’s become a states’ righter. The federal gummint needs to keep outta our binness.
Meanwhile, the economic damage to the state is approaching a billion dollars and is almost certain to go higher. McCrory can gaze out the window of his office in the state capitol and watch 18-wheelers full of hundred-dollar bills heading for Interstate 40 West. If it were fifty years earlier, I’d expect him to start claiming a Communist conspiracy. As it is, he’s left with the straw men of “political correctness,” the federal courts, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, all soft targets that don’t really work anymore because Obama-bashing is simply passé in a year when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are occupying all the sniper-rifle target space available.
There’s only one solution to this, and I know what it is because I myself am a Southern white male, therefore fully capable of getting myself into a situation like this.
We need a Southern Female Intervention.
Ideally, this would be his grandma. McCrory is only 60, so there’s a possibility that one of his grandmothers would be alive, but if that’s not an option, it can be his mother, his wife, an older sister, or—if all of those are absolutely unavailable—any pissed-off spinster aunt related by blood.
This designated Southern female will approach McCrory at the breakfast table, withhold the biscuits until she has his attention, and then say, “Pat, you’re either gonna stop this nonsense or I’m gonna slap you nekkid.”
And then she’s gonna serve the biscuits and gravy—and that’s all it will take.
Pat McCrory knows this. He grew up in Jamestown, North Carolina, a town of 3,300 people just 45 minutes down Highway 52 from Pilot Mountain. Pilot Mountain is the town cited by Andy Griffith as the inspiration for Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show. This is one of the most beloved sitcoms ever made, and the reason is that it always drew a contrast between two ways of solving a problem.
