In ‘Mitch, Please,’ Matt Jones takes on McConnell county by county by county
Like everyone else in the world right now, Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones had plans for what he would be doing in early April, and it was not sitting in Lexington broadcasting from home about canceled sports tournaments.
No, he was planning a national press tour of his new book, “Mitch, Please: How Mitch McConnell Sold Out Kentucky (and America, Too),” published by Simon and Schuster) which is the second most anticipated thing that Jones has done in the past couple of years, the first being a run to defeat McConnell, the most powerful, feared and often despised politician in Kentucky’s history.
As we now know, Jones is not running in what would have been a highly entertaining race, and “Mitch, Please,” is the story of that decision. It’s also a take-down of McConnell, a travelogue, and really, a love letter to Jones’ home state.
“I used the idea of a book about Mitch to write about Kentucky and explore my thought process,” Jones said in a recent phone interview. “The good part is that McConnell is so nationally known that it allows you a national platform to talk about Kentucky. I think the state as a whole is forgotten.”
“I wanted to do Kentucky justice,” he added. “We get stereotyped. I wanted to show we’re quirky and different but we’re not idiots. ”
A political cockroach
But first, make no mistake. Jones despises McConnell, calling him a “political cockroach,” who makes Sen. Ted Cruz look like Tom Hanks.
“Whatever it is that you hate about politics the most, chances are Mitch McConnell is largely responsible for its existence,” Jones and his co-author Chris Tomlin write. “The massive amounts of money that have flooded our political elections? Mitch McConnell is responsible. The political divide that seems to be tearing our country apart at the seams? Thank you, Mitch. The gridlock that keeps Congress from passing any meaningful legislation? Three for three ... Mitch McConnell is quite simply everything wrong with American politics in 2020.”
And so the travelogue begins, in highly entertaining prose, think a less profane Matt Taibbi or a more restrained Chapo Trap House, with lots of good footnotes:
In the New York Times, reviewer Dwight Garner liked Jones’ “acute, good-natured and often funny impressions about life, culture and politics in his home state,” but was not so fond of the road trip conceit. But I think Kentucky readers will like the mini-portraits of each county, some more and some less connected to McConnell. There’s Breckinridge, where Jones recounts how a lowly Democratic state representative was smeared by a McConnell PAC for his party affiliation, to LaRue, where Jones and Tomlin write a hilarious set of comparisons between Abraham Lincoln to McConnell, the savior of democracy to its gravedigger. I don’t need to tell you who wins.
Jones doesn’t break new ground in investigative journalism, but the book is an excellent compilation of McConnell’s win at all costs career in Jones’ brash and irreverent style. Some of the meatiest parts are when Jones uses the plight of low-income folks in different counties to talk about the difference made in Kentucky by the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health insurance, and McConnell’s really disgraceful attempts to scuttle it over the years.
The book also describes McConnell’s failed attempt to stop the publication of the book and get Jones kicked off his radio show, and a more successful attempt to stop his television show, “Hey Kentucky.” Jones blamed the campaign of Amy McGrath, a charge they denied.
McGrath is the putative front-runner in the crowded Democratic primary to take on McConnell, both nationally funded and nationally handled, which Jones is quick to criticize. Her campaign has brought in oodles of money, but stumbled along the way. In the deep crimson state that Kentucky has become, Democrats have to be honest and unafraid, Jones says.
“You cannot be scared of being a Democrat,” he told me. “Here’ s what they don’t get correct -- you can be for your issues so long as you respect the other side. So I get up, I don’t shoot guns, I’m pro choice, I’m against the wall, but people don’t get mad because I don’t look at them like they’re bad people. National democrats look down on social conservatives and I don’t.”
Jones said he’ll vote for the Democrat in the race but still thinks McConnell will win, particularly because Trump is on the ballot.
“We’re in a state where people really like Trump,” he said. “Trump still gives credence to the idea that regular people are being left behind; McConnell believes the richest people in the country are more important and we should take care of them.”
Still the long and costly primary fight against McGrath only to face the killing machine of McConnell’s campaign ultimately deterred Jones. Will he run for something else and risk leaving one of the top college sports radio shows in the country?
“Honestly running against Mitch was worth risking my career,” he said. “The others aren’t.”
And so for now, he’ll keep working on Kentucky Sports Radio, hawking his book, and hoping that people can find an online bookstore from which to buy it.
“I wanted this book to be read nationally,” he said, “but what I cared the most was what people in Ky thought about it.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 10:53 AM.
