The failed Senate candidate and current host of Mark McCloskey on Fire, the title of which unfortunately is just a turn of phrase and does not literally describe the format of the radio show (hey, I'd listen), took to Twitter on Monday afternoon to pontificate on how Black people should no longer have voting rights in the United States, among other things.
"If African Americans have their own national anthem, then that means they have their own nation, so if they are not part of the USA they shouldn't be getting any US benefits: no Medicare/Medicaid, no social security payments, no Obama care, no food stamps, no housing assistance, etc. (also, no voting rights in the country that sings the Star Spangled Banner)," he wrote.
Coming from a supposedly pro-America, pro-Christianity candidate, this sentiment is more than a little confusing. After all, the object of McCloskey's ire in his latest desperate bid for attention is a nice patriotic song giving glory to God that has been featured in at least 45 Christian hymnals since it was written in 1900, pre-dating even the unbelievably tacky old dump of a house Mark is so protective of.
Here are the opening lyrics of the tune whose very existence Mark apparently thinks should disqualify one from U.S. citizenship.
Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Subversive stuff. Quick, Mark, grab your gun (one of the ones you didn't hand over to the state) before the scary hymn gets ya!
Many on Twitter were swift to reply to McCloskey's unhinged outburst, rightly pointing out that this is one of the more preposterously small-weenie arguments to have snaked its way into the culture wars in recent years.
"It's a beautiful song," replied Mary Callaghan. "Calm down."
"Why. Can't There. Be. Another. Song. That. Celebrates. The. Same. Nation.," inquired the real Bob Floss.
"A Christian hymn sung to give hope to African-Americans in the depths of Jim Crow, sung by religious leaders like MLK Jr, whose designation as the 'Negro National Anthem' predates the US even HAVING a national anthem," pointed out Greg Gentry. "You object to THAT song?"
"Mediocre fragile white man has some thoughts," remarked Diana of Themuscira.
"There has never been a millisecond of your life when you weren’t the softest little bitch in your city," pointed out The Saurus, echoing the sentiments of many a St. Louisan.
In a way, though, it makes sense that McCloskey would feel this way. After all, the only reason anyone knows his name at all is because of that one time a bunch of Black people dared to walk past his house, to which he responded by crying and throwing up and then pulling a gun on them.
After handing said firearm over to the state no questions asked when a judge politely requested he do so, and without so much as a gunfight with federal agents, McCloskey then launched himself to national infamy by pretending to be a from-my-cold-dead-hands gun-rights absolutist, which is sort of similar to what it'd look like if I attempted to style myself as a teetotaling Prohibitionist. (Let the record show I'm actually drinking even as I write this.)
Surprisingly, it worked: How else can you explain the fact that McCloskey brought in 3 whole percentage points in his losing bid for Senate in 2022? The man is so deeply unlikeable that there's just no other way he could have put up those numbers. Since then he's continued to rack up the Ls, the most recent one coming after he sheepishly asked multiple judges if he could pwease, pwease, pwease have his favorite gun back, to which the reply was "no."
It's hard to imagine where McCloskey goes from here. By this point the man is scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel in his increasingly sweaty attempts to extend his 15 minutes of fame by riling up the dumbest people on the internet in support of his tired schtick. No amount of humiliating rejection — from the voting public, from the courts, from the Missouri bar, and on and on — seems to dissuade him. The man just lives to lose.
I mean seriously, Mark, can't you just go back to using social media to post those suspiciously stained thirst traps of yours? At least the camera loves you — even if no one else does.
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