How they see us: The Atlantic Wire

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UPDATED

Hard to find a good story about North Carolina in the national media these days. The image we present to the rest of the country grows more tarnished by the day.

Today the Atlantic Wire piled on with a story about our governor picked up from the Raleigh News & Observer, about 45-year-old Drew Swope, a grocery clerk from Charlotte.

Swope was working at Reid’s Fine Foods when  Gov. Pat McCrory, a former Charlotte mayor, came in for a bite and a photo op. The Wire picks up the story:

• According to Swope, he approached McCrory to see if he needed help when the governor entered his store on Sunday. After realizing who he was — the governor, and a man he disagrees with politically — Swope said, “Thanks for nothing.” McCrory got mad, started yelling about how he was the customer and then complained to Swope’s boss. “I did speak out of turn,” Swope admitted, but he was surprised the governor “had me excluded from the workplace because I upset his feelings.”

• According to the governor and his communications director, McCrory never yelled, and Swope made an “obscene gesture” at McCrory. Swope also posted on a January Facebook page protesting the governor’s visit, suggesting protesters kick an effigy of the governor in the groin — apparently that counts saying “things about physically harming the governor as well.”

God bless the Old North State.

UPDATE: Current Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon has stepped up and offered to help Swope find a new job. Not so sure I’d vouch for the guy, but politics makes for strange bedfellows.