I didn’t do anything with the Kristi-Noem-shot-her-dog story when it first popped up because A. Too easy, B. See headline above and C. She’s a Republican; what do you expect?
But I see now that I was wrong, that being who I am and being who my readers are, (Yes, I have readers) I owed them a learned commentary on this daft atrocity.
First, the obligatory explainer: (Sorry, my journalism roots) Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Republican, revealed in a forthcoming (Republican) book that she shot her dog Cricket because Cricket refused to learn to hunt in the proper servile-dog manner and disrupted a very organized and efficient Republican hunt of hapless birds and I HATE HER, I HATE HER I HATE HER!!!
Cricket, a wirehair pointer about 14 months old—HOW I HATE HER—had an “aggressive personality,” according to Noem and was “untrainable.”
“I realized she had to be put down,” Noem wrote. Plus, “I HATE HER.”
Now I can’t claim to be an outraged animal lover. I own no pets nor any collections of cute kitten-puppy photos. In fact, I am scarily immune to cuteness in general. And I eat meat. Medium rare. But I know this much: Here in the part of the country that’s still part of the country, we don’t fucking shoot our dogs.
OK, maybe we hand them over to some agency that “euthanizes” them but at least they first try to give them away to large, rambunctious families whose brutish children enjoy being bitten. We don’t just take them down to the empty lot, yell, “surprise!” and pop a slug into their brain.
Well, Gov. Noem is paying a price. Pre-Cricket, the odds were running high for Kristi to become Trump’s running mate, but now even the MAGAs are asking, “Do we want a confessed dog murderer standing beside the Anointed One as he waves to America?” Actually, that fits the MAGA image rather well, in my opinion; but they never take my advice.
As the Trump Vice Presidential Research Committee refocuses, Hollywood awakens to the possibilities. The narrative keeps playing out something like this:
Crinkle is an adorable little cocker-spaniel puppy belonging to the even-more-adorable Emma, six. Crinkle is full of pep and frolic and loves to go where she shouldn’t. Who could resist a puppy this cute? Well, the Evil Stepmother, for one. ES decrees that Crinkle must earn her keep like every other member of the family (Emma is a scullery maid), which means she must kill a ptarmigan or coati mundi for the kitchen table every day—or die. Crinkle is incapable of harming a cockroach.
Guess who ES resembles? Guess who will be detested by the entire under-ten demographic of North America?
For the sake of fairness, I have kept from you until now another incontestable fact of this case, because it would tip you right over into unobjective loathing, but now is the time to let all the poisons in the mud hatch out, as the Roman Emperor Claudius used to say. Fun guy, Claudius. Gov. Noem did not confine herself to dogs. She also shot a goat! We’re dealing with an unrepentant, serial mammal slayer, people.
And definitely an authoritarian.
To think she will have undergone all that plastic surgery for nothing. Do you think she can get a refund? Sounds like the perfect VP for the Trumpster. Under the Trump legal analysis, do you think she would get immunity if she committed this shooting rampage while in office?
She shoots horses too.
What a cunt (the Irish definition).