Spit Bucket With Benefits
The glorious vice presidency of J.D. Vance.
Many voters, including my very own readers (I’m ashamed to say), have shown a great deal of disrespect toward Vice President J.D. Vance on very subjective grounds. Bias!
They say he is a “racist disgrace” or a “xenophobic disgrace” or a “misogynist disgrace” or a “bible-thumping disgrace” or a “homophobic disgrace” or a “hypocritical disgrace” or a “morally bankrupt disgrace” or a “slavering disgrace” — all on the basis of certain over-publicized statements supposedly “denigrating” minorities, immigrants, women, Muslims, the poor, educated “elites” and entire “random countries,” such as the backward and undistinguished United Kingdom.
Give the man a break. I mean, why focus on a few isolated slurs against anyone who is not a well-to-do white Christian male when those possible excesses are so obviously overshadowed by his many proud attributes? To wit:
Tall.
Thus far unindicted.
And maybe there are others, too. In fact, come to think of it, here’s a big one: Dude knows how to have a good time.
You’ve probably heard the famous quotation of John Nance Garner, two-term veep under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, concluding that the vice presidency “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Fucking Democrats. Sorry, Mr. Garner. If you’re so smart, why are you dead? Huh? Fact is, the nation’s third highest office — after the head of the Federalist Society and the presidency — is exactly what you make of it. J.D. Vance started that process even before he was elected, by selling his political soul to the billionaire Libertarian creep Peter Thiel, then inserting his nose deep into Trump’s leaky colon. But goodness gracious, he hasn’t stopped there!
Warm spit, eh? Did anybody say that when he went kayaking with his family for his August 1 birthday, prior to which excursion the U.S. Secret Service ordered water levels raised from the Caesar Creek to the Great Miami River for a better boating experience? Haters like U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Cal) thought it was a pretty selfish and tone deaf intervention, considering the budget for our National Parks is being decimated by Vance’s administration. “A rising tide lifts only JD Vance’s boat,” the commie complained.
But that’s just his hatred of America talking. Swalwell is too Vance-deranged to understand that putting America First begins with putting your family leisure time first, provided it takes place in America proper and not some shithole country like England. Although, even in the Land of Takeaway Curries and Streaming Police Dramas, Vance does recognize the nature of our “special relationship.” On Wednesday, while he and his entourage visited an upscale food emporium in the Cotswolds, their dozen mammoth black SUVs filled every handicap-parking space within sight of Daylesford Organic, leaving locals with mobility issues to drag their sorry asses from more distant parking spaces to the Chipping Norton village shops.
For most of the next three hours, the vice president inspected artisanal breads, keeping the world safe from everything but gluten.
Those episodes echoed a July Vance family trip to Disneyland, which brought tourist activity to a near standstill while the Vances checked out Indiana Jones Adventure, Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blaster and Davey Crockett’s Explorer Canoes, which he refused to ride when he found out the water levels would not be raised for him. He showed particular interest in Peter Pan’s Flight until he found out the destination was not El Salvador. He did acknowledge how his family visit disrupted the theme park’s operations, but he offered a very solid justification — which I quote here, I swear to God, verbatim:
Sorry to all the people who were at Disneyland for the longer lines, but we had a very good time.
But enough about the vice president’s preternatural sensitivity and empathy. John Nance Garner was not the only prominent American to turn a phrase. As the late H.J. Heinz possibly never said but certainly should have, “You can take the measure of a man by his choice of condiments.” Well, in a recent no-holds-barred podcast interview hosted by Katie Miller, wife of Trump advisor/golem Stephen Miller, we discovered that Vance is not one of those philistine freaks who eschews ketchup and mustard in favor of smothering mayonnaise on everything.
Granted, that’s a low bar for evaluating human worth, but it’s a relief that at least Vance has advanced in his dining aesthetic beyond primordial slime. Here’s the transcript:
MILLER: If you could only eat one condiment for the rest of your life, what would it be?VANCE: One condiment? Does barbecue sauce count?
MILLER: Yeah.
VANCE: Okay, barbecue sauce.
MILLER: Not mayonnaise?
VANCE: No. No, mayonnaise is like in low doses is good, but it’s kind of like — I had a buddy who used to eat French fries with mayonnaise. I thought that was disgusting.
MILLER: It’s the only thing my husband eats.
VANCE: With French fries or like, period?
MILLER: Period.
VANCE: Okay. Wow. I didn’t realize —
MILLER: He’s only a mayonnaise guy.
VANCE: Okay. I learned something about Stephen I didn’t know.
MILLER: Yeah, it’s — whatever.
Perhaps I have focused here on the wrong MAGA hero. But I must add that seldom, in my very long life, have I been less surprised.