Buttocracy

Couple weeks ago (before our Northern excursion), the campaign caravan was rollin' through Minnesota. We'd just missed a campaign stop in Duluth due to a combination of factors involving McDougal eating our GPS receiver, John Ashcroft, and a surprising lack of cartographic and geography skills among McDougal's top advisors.

McDougal was stoned to the bejesus on a solution of mescaline, robitussin and whale butter. He dropped trow sometime around Noon and at the time I first considered dispatching this report, it was well after 7 p.m.

McDougal had spent the better part of seven hours "accidentally" shoving small household items up his ass. No one knows exactly what all the big man had put up there, but we had confirmed reports of the following items missing from the bus:

• three Star Wars figures
• a roll of toilet paper
• two Gameboys
• One of those cool Razor phones
• One 16-oz plastic tumbler of Fresca
• Four lavalier microphones
• Mic stand
• boom
• our sound guy

By about 9 o'clock, McDougal was visibly uncomfortable. Sweating and coughing, occasionally breaking into tears. It was then that he made his confession. Tearfully and with some measure of shame, he admitted to "accidentally" maybe "getting some stuff in my butt."

Since then, McDougal has banned pantlessness on the bus and with the exception of a few paid positions has actually outlawed pantslessness for all staffers and interns at all times. He's even considering adding a pantless ban to his campaign platform, citing the great success his nemesis John Ashcroft had covering the nasty teets of Lady Liberty.

"America wants this," McDougal decreed. "And if I can spare one man, woman, or child the pain I experienced in this dreadful buttific catastrophe, then it will all be worth it."