Kansas City News Blog

We made it! Self-proclaimed "Chicken-Shit with an Attitude" Gloria Squitiro included The Pitch in her 35 page manuscript that's sure to grab the attention of book publishers looking for an unstable megalomaniac (she's tentatively titled the "book" It All Started When I was Born and C'mon Funk, Move Your Ass -- Gloria Squitiro and the New Politics because it's all about Glo-Squit).

Thanks to the intrepid reporters of KSHB Channel 41,  the whole diary/manuscript/whatever you call it came out Monday night. Birthing Pioneer Squitiro didn't like the Pitch cover on the right. Here's her screed written on December 31, 2008:

I wrote in our Christmas letter this year that while Funk has become somewhat of a folk hero, I am whatever the opposite of that would be. I also wrote that I've been referring to myself as Yoko, as all that is wrong in Kansas City is either my fault or it will be my fault any day now.

Wouldn't you know it, The Pitch's last cover of the year was of me and Funk in a John and Yoko pose. Funk was horrified. He thought it was degrading, especially with the kids in town for Christmas. He also wondered what the purpose was. I think it is incredibly disrespectful as Funk is a highly recognized publicly [sic] official that appears realistically naked on the cover of a newspaper. It's also amazingly hypocritical. Where is the shock and outrage over the newspaper being too racy? Especially compared to my Christmas letter that was meant for personal eyes only?

[Pitch editor] CJ [Janovy] is like a puppy that was taken from the tit too soon. She's so needy and clingy and no one has been able live up to her expectations.

I guess there can be worse things to be compared to other than Bill and Hilary and John and Yoko.

Whew. Thought she was going to be mad there for a second. We got off easy compared to say, Ruth Bates, who is suing Squitiro for racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Squitiro calls Bates a "bitch" and writes on August 8: "Fuck you Ruth Bates. You wanted to start something, well now you started something. Watch out. My lawyer is coming to get you."

Yeah, her lawyer's coming to write you a big settlement check!

We also get off easier than Squitiro's own hubby, Vulcanized Mayor Mark Funkhouser.

"I have never hit a single person before in my life, but I have hit Funk more times in this last 18 months than I can bare," Squitiro writes on December 19. "I don't know how he remains with me."

Squit and Funk fight throughout the 35 pages because the mayor "doesn't respond to my hurt," which manifests itself in tears and therapy sessions and lots and lots of cussing. There's also too much info, like the day she was "PMSing" (September 21) and how Funkhouser is "barely escaping with his life." Home life must be so pleasant. Especially with the outbursts that seem to come out of nowhere, like her rage against a mechanic who was trying to explain what's wrong with her car.

"I cut him off before he finished his long-assed explanation and told Funk to pay the man for his time. I didn't add that he should pay him quickly so I didn't end up killing him. It's become almost impossible to do the most mundane things in the world now. And our time is too short to have someone purposely fucking with us like this asshole surely was."

You are not paranoid. Everyone is out to get you.

Squitiro fails at portraying herself as the sympathetic figure that she desperately longs to be. She's mean. Really, really  mean. She hisses about Funkhouser keeping a 5-minute meeting on his schedule.

"It's the first anniversary that we've ever missed," she writes.

She throws a tantrum when she can't sit at the "head table" with Funkhouser at a speaking engagement as well as the lack of "special parking for the Mayor." Squitiro storms off and goes home. Whatever happened to that stuff about regular folks?  

"These macho men had just slapped the Mayor's wife in the face, and then expected me to sit down and quietly accept my place in their world," Squitiro writes. "The worst part was that I knew that my husband hadn't even noticed the insult."

She complains about having to pick up Funkhouser after the event, "wasting my gas. And tearing myself away from my daughter who appeared to be coming down with some sort of illness right before my eyes."

Squitiro doesn't hide her feelings for Councilmembers Cathy Jolly, Beth Gottstein, Jan Marcason and Bill Skaggs. She gives Gottstein, who she calls "sick" and "desperate for approval and attention," an "icy hello" at an event. She calls Marcason a "phony" and says she "despises" her "with a vigor and energy that knows no bounds. I will work to show the woman for what she really is -- a complete phony." She labels Skaggs "a moron."

She's oblivious to how she treats people. On October 27, she writes that she's not sure how someone with the last name of Kemper "has any friends his attitude is so angry."

She doesn't hide her contempt for Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, who she claims tried to avoid her and Funk at Meiners. Squitiro even hates the city, calling KC a "backward, Podunk city."

There's much about behind-the-scenes maneuvering that comes across as inept once she reveals her motivations. She writes about meeting Republican operative Jeff Roe at Cascone's "so all the world could see what we were up to. We met with [Woody] Cozad there as well, for the same reason." She sure does hate playing politics, though.

On December 1, she laments not feeding the press or issuing press release. "We're pathetic losers," she writes. "Here's our chance to flip the sentiment and to vindicate me, and we do nothing with it."

The Funkhouser-Squitiro family sounds like it's on the verge of collapse -- they're "barely keeping our little family together." Then there are downright creepy moments.

"Andrew screeches at me because I smacked his ass as he walked by me," Squitiro writes of her son on August 4. "I wonder what is up with him, that I don't know about." (Note to Squitiro: Like most adult males with a mother fond of inappropriate touching, the guy's probably weirded out by you slapping his ass!) 

Young master Squitiro and mom have a big fight when he refuses to get mommy and daddy sandwiches. "He twisted it around to make me look crazy for asking," Squitiro writes.

Even Tara Squitiro's boyfriend, Charles, doesn't escape Gloria Squitiro's wrath. She calls him a "loser" and recounts giving the poor guy a hard time from the minute she met him.

Then it gets even more bizarre. Squitiro claims to have a hidden "power."

"I've been trying to pretend to others that it doesn't exist and thus pushed it away," she writes on August 9. "But now I realize that I have to let it in. I have the burden of being a leader, but none of the protection."
 
On October 8, her delusions of grandeur are even more pronounced. "I don't know why I'm even in this," she writes. "This wasn't my dream. Yet like so many other things in my life, including leaving Funk, in the end, I just can't turn away from it. Something is driving me forward that is bigger than me. It's so stupid."

This also wouldn't be Squitiro without a visit from a "teenage spirit," which she saw on December 6. "It scared me, but mostly I just wanted to have a good night sleep." Wait. Quit talking about how tired you are. Give us more about the spirit.

"Time enough to get my courage up to allow a spirit to come shining through."

She can't seem to admit that she's done anything wrong. On the "real mistakes" that she and Funk have made: "Recommending Ed Wolf to be the council liaison, not putting my foot down when he chose the title of Chief of Staff, and not putting my foot down on Ed's insistence of the hiring of Ruth Bates, Shawn Pierce and Burnetta Burtin. This was our downfall."

But her December 7 entry about her disappointment with her deposition sums up everything  nicely. "I wasn't as articulate or as thorough as I thought I was."