Don’t you just hate it when amateurs try to do your job?

El Jefe de First Draft Adrastos likes to call the events of January 6, 2021 the Dipshit Insurrection. After this week’s release of the video showing Representative Barry Loudermilk giving a tour of the Capitol on January 5 to people later implicated in being involved with the attempted violent overthrow of the US government I have another name for it

The Amateur Hour.

As many of you know, when I’m not breezily commenting on social and political events of the day I work as a tour guide in Northern California. In that capacity I have taken people to lots of different places — wineries, the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco City Hall, the offices of Oracle, Facebook, and Google. One thing that all of these tours have had in common is that they are planned weeks if not months in advance. I know where I’m going, when I have to be there, and how long the group will be staying.

And I know who I’m taking and why they are there.

This is especially true when I do a tour of any building. I know, all tour guides know, there are the places in a building people want to see and there are places in a building that people have no business seeing. In the San Francisco City Hall, everyone wants to see the rotunda and the magnificent grand staircase leading up to the second floor (mostly because it’s where the last scene of Raiders Of The Lost Ark was shot). Long ago I made the decision never to point out the window Dan White slipped through to conceal that he was carrying a gun to murder Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, not just because of the morbid factor but also on the off chance someone in the group was looking to recreate that event.

When I take folks to the tech company campuses there are strict rules regarding photos. Basically you can’t take pictures there. Of anything. Anywhere. And I make that quite clear before we even get on the bus. And it’s reiterated by the PR person for the company when we get there.

So an amateur like Barry Loudermilk leading a tour of the Capitol building and allowing members of his group to blithely snap photos of, no not “gold eagles on the wall” as he claims, but stairways and security checkpoints and entrance and exit points offends me as a purely bullshit amateur move.

Let’s get into it Barry. The Capitol hadn’t been open for months because of COVID. This “constituent” and friends got in there how? And are you in the habit of personally leading tours of the building to any constituent that asks for a tour? You don’t delegate that to some low rung aide? And you conveniently turn away and talk to someone else as this “constituent” snaps photo after photo of things that he had no reason to be taking a photo of?

Unless of course his intention was to use these in a planned attack on the building. Which just happened to occur the next day. And for which the same man, perhaps loving his new iPhone, took video of himself and the thousands of others marching up to the Capitol.

WHILE HE SPEWED VILE CRAP ABOUT HARMING DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKERS!

But to top it all off Barry you don’t seem to be able to keep your story straight about just what that tour was all about. First there wasn’t a tour at all, but when the surveillance video surfaced (another indicator of how amateur this whole operation was, they forgot about the surveillance cameras everywhere) you changed it to the “interested constituent and family” story, then it was “an interested constituent and a friend of theirs”. What’s next, it was all just a game of hide and seek?

So not only are you an amateur when it comes to being a tour guide, you seem to be an amateur at being a congressperson. It is still to be determined if you are an amateur at being a seditious fascist but I have my suspicions you might go three for three on that score.

If this truly was a totally innocent “let me show you around” tour then you would have said that to begin with. Instead you keep changing the story. Let me lay out for you what I think you were thinking:

1. No tour – the overthrow of the government didn’t work and suddenly you realized you could be exposed as a potential collaborator. “I don’t know what ya’ll talking about”.
2. The constituent tour – oops, not only did you do a tour, oh let’s call it was-  a tactical recon, but the surveillance cameras picked it up. “OK, I was just showing some good folks around and I wasn’t paying any attention to what they were taking pictures of, but ya’ll (his actual constituents) know I back Trumpy all the way”. Let’s call it the wink, wink excuse.
3. The constituent tour with guest – oh shit the guy is on tape taking pictures of stairways while I’m there looking the other way. “You know there’s a…a gold eagle on the wall there, that’s what he’s taking pictures of….”

Barry, let me tell you something, professional tour guide to amateur tour guide. When you fuck up, own up. Otherwise it’s time for lawyers, guns, and money

Shapiro Out