Big Dan McCann making today's stunning political announcement. Afterward reporters were treated to his sideshow: a mystifying, bona fide wonder of the age.This criticism is an unprecedented step for what many observers saw as kindred industries. But with new lows being hit and standards of truth and honesty being thrown out the window by government and campaign spokespeople every day, snake oil salesmen, word illusionists, carnies, evangelical preachers, grifters, grafters, hustlers, swindlers, and con men were tired of having their professional reputation sullied by comparisons to communications directors of political campaigns.
“Look we know that sometimes shit is shit and you just got to grin and eat it, but come on now, this is ridiculous,” observed Big Dan McCann, a fifteen-year veteran Barker at Bazooko’s Circus in Las Vegas. “I’ve had to get people to walk in to see dog-faced boys, Siamese twins, malformed fetuses, pinheads, flipper babies, and bearded ladies, but even I have my limits. I mean there’s trying to get people to come in and see two geeks bite the heads off of live chickens and then there’s trying to defend Sarah Palin’s supposed wealth of foreign policy experience. Dignity is dignity. Two bits or not, no one’s gonna take a gander if they don't believe in the freak show."
"This is a beautiful art when performed correctly. You get people in by massagin' the truth, by buildin' up expectations and sellin' the experience to the point where if they don't come out praising the alien carcass, they look like rubes who got swindled. If you lie to them they won't go out and sell the lie for you, they'll just demand their money back. Didn't these people learn anything from the Grifters? Cusack was tits!”
Most of the shame has been directed at Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign strategist and adviser, who got his start in Atlantic City trying to goad tourists into taking a trip on the “Ye Olde Mill” ride at the destitute Funzilla Amusement Gardens and Salt Water Taffery. Union members see his spokesman work for the McCain campaign as a violation of his oath of integrity when he joined the UFFH in 1992.
“Schmitty’s done us wrong,” said mentor and UFFH VP of Humbug and Swindling Arty Kotch. “When he was growing up he could scam anything off of anyone. He could sell shaved ice and piss and have people telling people two towns over to head down to the Boardwalk to try the great lemonade. He was brilliant.”
“Now? Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair look down their noses at him. He tells you the sun is out; you stick your head out the window and wonder if that fiery orb isn’t some trick he’s pulling. He hands you chocolate ice cream and you suspect a form of ape excrement. You hear him lambaste the New York Times for printing simple incontrovertible fact and you just shake your head.”
Kotch then sighed and threw up his hands. “The piss-icee kid is dead, replaced by a shell of a man who couldn’t sell handjobs at a hard-on convention. Not even with his delicately moisturized mitts and his strong yet supple wrists.”
In fact, this year several members of the political establishment have been thrown out of the prestigious Münchhausen Society for “…conduct detrimental to the field of professional truth stretching and tall tale telling.”
Many in the huckster world are wondering just what the current strategy among political spokesmen is. P.T. Barnum’s famous maxim was that a sucker was born every minute. But by industry calculations, the rate is more likely around every three and a half minutes, which at its highest levels leaves the US with only 135,000 suckers born each year.
At best, the BCB estimates the American Sucker Index to be around 23%, accounting for most, if not all, of President Bush’s dwindling support. Furthermore not all are voting eligible and with many working jobs on Wall Street and at investment banking firms they have already tuned out of the political race to concentrate on the more pressing matters of standing in soup lines and fighting hobos for cardboard underneath bridges. It is a small subset of the American populace that is largely immovable from within the current political climate which has industry analysts wondering why every campaign and government organization pitches their message specifically to this group.
“Honest to God stool pigeons are born that way, we all know that,” said Bertram Hinkle, industry analyst and licensed ‘smooth operator’. “The only way you turn the populace into a blubbering mass of gullible stooges, naively waitin’ for commands to be obeyed, is with some large, scary, transformative event. Mortgages ain’t gon’ do it, sugar britches. So all this flailing about liberal media and sexin’ kindergartners and putting Maybelline on a fine summer ham ain’t gonna put the heebie-jeebbies into the masses. Ya’ll just debasing yourself with a kind of perverse performance art of flop sweat and failure. It got us scratching our heads in mystification, I say I say.”
While the McCain campaign and the National Association of Political Spokesmen refused to comment for the story, an hour before press time we received a letter with no postage or any other markings on it. Inside were the words, written in blood, "In the tank."
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