Bill McClellan Unaware That Policy Is Sometimes Set in St. Louis?

Today's Post-Dispatch includes a column from Bill McClellan about Occupy St. Louis, or at least about some clown who spray-painted the word "Occupy" on a sign in Frontenac. Though I agree with McClellan that it was dumb to vandalize the sign, it probably was slightly over-the-top (as noted by @nextstl on Twitter) for McClellan to compare this to the Taliban blowing up 1,500+ year old statues. And then there was this amazing gem from McClellan:

Actually, I never quite understood the Occupy St. Louis part of the movement. Occupy Wall Street, I got that. I would have been fine with Occupy Washington. Maybe even Occupy Palm Beach.

But Occupy St. Louis? Who around here sets policy?

I'll have to consult with some local experts and historians on this, but I'm pretty sure there are, in fact, policies that are set in St. Louis. Some people refer to these as "local" or "St. Louis" policies. And on occasion, these policies might be thought to favor the interests of big businesses and the wealthy over the interests of the general public, which is exactly what the Occupy movement opposes.

Bill McClellan Stands Up For Womens' Right To Be Asked Out By Wealthy Bosses

I have a strange feeling that more in-depth analysis is forthcoming from other spheres of the internets, but for now I'll just note that Bill McClellan writes some really terrible crap sometimes. From his column on the Herman Cain sexual harassment fiasco:

When I first arrived in St. Louis, I could not get on at a newspaper. I answered an ad for a job as a recruiter at a school for medical assistants. Its target audience was young women from low-income families because these women would be eligible for government loans. The young women would then use those loans to be trained for jobs that didn't pay much. The economics of it were shaky.

But the recruiters were not supposed to be selling the economics of a career as a medical assistant. We were supposed to sell the young women — and especially their mothers — on the likelihood of assistants marrying their doctor employers.

"That's why we need to keep churning out assistants. They keep marrying doctors and retiring. ..."

I say we. I did not get the job.

But I think of this army of medical assistants marching into the world with the collective dream of marrying doctors. How could this come to be if bosses are not allowed to date their employees? It would be unfair to these young women if the doctors were afraid to ask them out, lest they be accused of sexual harassment.

See that? When McClellan pines for the simpler olden days before all those loud feminists and sensitive types made life so incredibly difficult for wealthy bosses, he's not doing it for the men. He just thinks it would be "unfair" to the women.

How incredibly chivalrous.

Ed Martin Misrepresents Bill McClellan

On his facebook page, Ed Martin claimed that Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan was saying that Martin was "outside of Washington" in a recent episode of Donnybrook.

But that's not really accurate. If you go to 22:44 in the video, you'll see Ray Hartman of St. Louis magazine mocking the idea that Ed Martin is a political outsider:

The amazing thing about Ed Martin, I think, is that he positions himself as one of these angry tea party-ish outsiders. He was the arrogant Chief of Staff in the government on our taxpayer's dime for Matt Blunt for some time! And the idea that he can go from being Matt Blunt's tough guy Chief of Staff to being outside the government suddenly is kind-of strange.

And Bill McClellan responds (23:08):

Well, outside of Washington is the argument that he's made.

Now Ed Martin is certainly "outside of Washington" in the sense that he hasn't ever been elected to federal office, but he also seems to have plenty of D.C. insider connections as well as a D.C. Republican insider approach to nearly every issue. Regardless, McClellan did not say that Martin is "outside of D.C." He said that Martin is arguing that he is "outside of D.C." If he simply means geographically, it's a mind-numbingly meaningless point. If he meant something else, then it's a point that needs to be argued for, and Bill McClellen did not argue for it or even indicate that he intended to argue for it.

Update: here's video of the relevant exchange (h/t to Sean at FiredUp for putting it on YouTube):