True story: I was out walking the dog the other day when a nice, kind of slow fellow wandered up and made small talk. He asked me about the dog, which is a two year old golden retriever named Farley. He’s the friendliest damn dog you’ll ever meet, a burglar’s delight. He’s so friendly, in fact, he gives me at least one quarter of the bed every night.
Anyway, anyway, this guy says to me, “So did you hear about what that one guy did, Mitch Roffner, Roffney, or whatever his name is, the guy running for president?”
I try never to hear about him if I can help it, I thought. “Nope,” I said.
“He tied his Irish Setter to the top of the car and drove down the freeway, and it pissed and shit all over the place.”
I hate to say it, but my first thought wasn’t concern for the dog’s safety. My first thought that was that if this is true, it could potentially sink Romney. Yes. “Really?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, its piss was flying all over.”
Beautiful, I thought, just beautiful. Prince Romney, Lord of Bain Capital, is a stupid and inhumane jerk. And that fact that he let his dog crap all over the public highways has a certain symbolic value, don’t you think?
When I got home I Googled it up to see if it was true. Sure enough, it was true:
The reporter intended the anecdote that opened part four of the Boston Globe’s profile of Mitt Romney to illustrate, as the story said, “emotion-free crisis management”: Father deals with minor — but gross — incident during a 1983 family vacation, and saves the day. But the details of the event are more than unseemly — they may, in fact, be illegal.Sigh. Double sigh. Where to begin?The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.
Seamus doesn’t get to ride inside the car, kids. Dogs are unpredictable and make messes, like workers. He might soil our matching denim shirts. We musn’t get dog hair on our khakis! Strap him in a cage and ignore him, like the rest of those troublesome things. What do you call them? Oh yes, the people. Sorry, dears, it’s so easy to forget they’re out there.
If we were living in better times, I wouldn’t have any problem with a Romney presidency. I wouldn’t be happy about it, of course, but whaddya gonna do? He could take his place in the dull gray parade of mediocre presidents that bejewel our history, people like Chester Alan Arthur or Benjamin Harrison, or Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, or Franklin Pierce. Just about every major political figure out there gives me indigestion. Until I head about this, though, I didn’t find him any more or less disagreeable than any of the other snakes who rule us. Excuse me, I mean legislators. He’s just another garden variety rich prick who thinks he’s entitled to the presidency. They’re a dime a dozen. They seem to emerge by fuckin’ parthenogenesis in this circus of a country we live in. But what kind of asshole straps his dog to the roof of the car for twelve hours? What were wifey and the kids doing all that time, meekly obeying daddy? These people are seriously messed up. This puts him in the Sandusky zone of villainy as far as I’m concerned, or at least the Michael Vick zone.
Do you think these plastic weirdos will treat the country any better than they treated Seamus?
1 comment:
This is *almost* the story of Seamus. According to Romney, the issue was that Seamus became ill with diarrhea and vomiting during the trip, and rather than have dog shit and vomit all over the interior of the car, they strapped his carrier to the top of the car.
At which point my response is, WTF? If your dog is ill, you take him to the *VETERINARIAN*, you don't merrily go your way with the dog strapped to the top of the car!
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