We Bought the Certain Dog
It could be our new national catchphrase
There was black comedy gold in last night’s debate between Biden and Butthead.
For example, there was the agonizing back-and-forth about who was better at golf.
From the CNN rush transcript:
TRUMP: I’m in very good health. I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way. And I do it. He doesn’t do it. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards.
[CNN HOST DANA] BASH: Thank you. President Biden?
BIDEN: You’re going to see he’s six-foot-five and only 225 pounds — or 235 pounds.
TRUMP: (inaudible).
BIDEN: Well, you said six-four, 200.
TRUMP: (inaudible).
BIDEN: Well, anyway, that’s — anyway, just take a look at what he says he is and take a look at what he is.
Look, I’d be happy to have a [golf] driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a 6. And by the way [turning to Trump], I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?
TRUMP: That’s the biggest lie, that he’s a 6 handicap, of all.
BIDEN: I was 8 handicap.
TRUMP: Yeah.
BIDEN: Eight, but I have — you know how many —
TRUMP: I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: President Trump, we’re going to —
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Let’s not act like children.
BIDEN: You are a child.
We’d be better off choosing between two actual, randomly selected children than between these two. Trump is rightly called a narcissist but if there’s one man alive who rivals him in that it’s Scranton Beavis. My golf swing is better than his, he can’t hit a ball 50 yards! Well, my handicap was a six, or maybe an eight, I forget, but still!
Both of these old men are depressingly familiar to all of us by now. Each speaks in his own idiosyncratic way, and we, like their sullen and oppressed children, have learned to mentally fill in the ellipses and omissions. That we as a nation have trained ourselves to do this for them — for each of them — is a testament for how low the country has fallen.
‘We bought the certain dog.’
The roaring-laugh-out-loud moment for me was when each was asked what he would do to help people addicted to opioids. Trump, of course, turned this to a rambling discussion of the porous Mexican border, and bragged about his administration’s achievements at stopping fentanyl shipments:
“We got great equipment. We bought the certain dog. That’s the most incredible thing that you’ve ever seen, the way they can spot it.”
The certain dog! As a concept this does indeed sound like the most incredible thing! Does the certain dog spot it, spot the fentanyl? Or does he smell it? Who is this dog? What’s his name? Is he a chocolate Labrador? I bet he is, they are the world’s greatest dogs.
Biden’s own ramble about how to help people already addicted to opioids also involved border security. But Biden isn’t a dog guy. No. He puts his faith in “these big machines that roll over everything that comes across the border, and it costs a lot of money.”
That’s an actual quote, and it continued like this: “More fentanyl machines [blah blah]. We need those machines. We need those machines. [blah blah]. That’s what we have to do. We need those machines.”
Does the nation have a complicated, major problem?
Yes, and we are offered two solutions:
BEAVIS: These big machines that roll over everything, and it costs a lot of money.
BUTTHEAD: We bought the certain dog, and it’s the most incredible thing, the tricks he can do.
I wrote that down too: "We need those machines."
Send in the machines! Maybe certain dog-machines. Robot dogs?
God, what a shit-show!
How did we ever come to this?