The Bland Man

A number of tonight's false claims at the RNC came from Vice President Mike Pence, CNN's @ddale8 says.

"Pence said again that Biden wants 'open borders' ... It's just wrong. Biden does not support completely unrestricted migration" https://t.co/TnNCUL7WnK pic.twitter.com/J4shr0iOzx

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 27, 2020

I'll never understand the folks who thought Donald Trump would replace Mike Pence with Nikki Haley (or anyone else) because, for one thing, Mike Pence looks at him like a dog looks at a man with bacon in his pocket, and for another, Pence is unsweetened porridge. He's dull. He will never, not ever, not on pain of death, not for love or money, upstage Trump. He's an unrepentant liar, but he does it without a single muscle in his shrunken apple-head face betraying him in the slightest. He puts the "bland" in blandishments.

He gently, ever so gently, acts as a figleaf to the normals that the Trump Priapus isn't going to poke their eyes out with any such horrors as the very real sexual harassment and rape allegations, such as the one that Trump right now is refusing to offer his DNA via cheek-swab to refute (because, would it? one might very well ask).

Does he mislead--yeah, of course. He offers a narrative of violence in Trump's America that ignores that a fallen police officer was killed by a right-wing Boogaloo Boi, not by the largely peaceful BLM protesters. He referred to violence in Kenosha, but did not mention that Kenosha Kyle is a MAGA. He lied about the Veteran's Choice act, signed by Barack Obama, even though Trump himself was called on this egregious lie just recently, but in the meanwhile, he had elderly vets in his audience with no masks or apparent social distancing, because, well, I guess their sacrifice for their country should extend even to this?

That's warped.

I've been comfortable telling everyone about what a monster Trump is, because, fuck, low-hanging fruit and all that. But Mike Pence is no less monstrous for being the Invisible Man to Trump's obvious Mr. Hyde.

So anyway, in a bullshit evening populated by bland people who told us stupid things like "Biden/Harris are radicals who would ban farm animals" and that Donald Trump really genuinely cares about human beings because he might have called one of his campaign staff after an operation (which refers to one person, useful to him, only, and not the actual broad swath of persons with pre-existing conditions), Mike Pence showed how he is the clutch person in the Trump Administration, because he excels at mendacity and boringness at once. One could have muted his speech and ignored closed captions, and come away with as much of an impression as having listened. He said a great deal of nothing, and a lot of it was untrue and potentially dangerously so.

He even fixed his mouth to say one of the dumbest things I think could even be made a campaign slogan, "We will make American Great Again, Again."  Like, for a sterling blink if you missed it bit, we were made great, but then the COVID-19, and all the deaths, the job losses, the failed businesses, the unemployment, the evictions and a wave of foreclosures and whatnot (which we are not actually, if one was any competent prognosticator, even barely done with) but forget all the things that happened on Trump's watch including the racial divisions and the carnage and thhhhhaaaaatttttt sort of thing.

I don't care how bland this mofo is, you don't get to recover a fumble, regain a few yards, and ask for infinite downs. The line would be more plausibly delivered by the late, great Leslie Nielsen. Who, I think, would play Pence better than Pence does. For laughs, because taking Pence seriously is a painful business.