Primarily Dreadful

[Content Note: Animal cruelty.]

GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE! I hope you are still maintaining maximum enthusiasm for this EXCITING political season! We are getting SO CLOSE to the conventions, which will definitely not be a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars while there are USians starving and desperate for healthcare and losing their homes to foreclosures because they can't find a job and their unemployment benefits have run out, and those orgies of political excess to celebrate nominations that have been obvious for a year will be super fun for everyone, I'm sure.


I am VERY SORRY, Mr. Romney and President Obama, but IT'S TRUE!

Let's play Write a Story with Headlines! Romney, Obama in Tight Race as Gallup Daily Tracking Begins. By Historic Standards, Obama Is in Trouble. Gender Gap and Likeability Keep Obama over Romney. Romney Rallies GOP, Faces Big Popularity Deficit for General Election. Romney Gaining on Obama. The End!

"That story makes no sense!"—You. Welcome to US politics!

In other news, Ann Romney, who is quickly becoming my favorite person in America, told Diane Sawyer that their family pet Seamus, who traveled on top of the car in a kennel on family vacations, "loved it."

"The dog loved it," Ann Romney said. "He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation."

Zelda's not buying it.
Two things: 1. Let's just say, for terrified shits and giggles, that Seamus did actually "love" riding in a kennel strapped to the top of a car. That doesn't magically make it responsible pet ownership. Zelda loves eating chocolate, but chocolate is bad for dogs, so I don't give it to her, and I don't leave it out where she can get to it.

Just because a dog might love something doesn't mean it's okay: The reason dogs are the pets and humans are the guardians is because humans have the ability to assess that some things aren't good for dogs to do. It is wildly unsafe to strap a dog to the top of a car in a crate, irrespective of the dogs' feelings about it, and the fact that the Romneys are using Seamus' alleged affection for riding on top of the car to justify having done something dangerous to a dog for their own convenience is some straight-up bullshit.

(I will also note that it's all kinds of hilarious that the Romneys are basically arguing that it was Seamus' choice, which they indulged and respected, but refuse to extend the same respect to adult human women who want to make choices about their own bodies.)

2. Perhaps one of the reasons that people aren't letting this story go is because of how the facts keep changing.

Adding to the left's narrative that Romney had little compassion for the animal is a detail from the 1983 trip that Ann Romney confirmed to Sawyer. The dog became sick, defecating all over itself and the windshield of the car, leading Romney to hose them both off before they continued on the drive to Canada.

"Once, he — we traveled all the time — and he ate the turkey on the counter. I mean, he had the runs," Ann Romney said, laughing as she explained how the dog got diarrhea.

In a 2007 blog written during Romney's first campaign for the presidency, Ann Romney said the dog rode "in an enclosed kennel, not in the open air" and compared the experience with a person riding on a motorcycle or roller coaster.

If the kennel was enclosed, how did the shit get all over the windshield of the car? "It was explosive diarrhea! It exploded the crate wide open!"—Ann Romney, next week.

The Romneys seem hurt and perplexed that people keep bringing up this story, but it's a story that's emblematic of lots of problems with Mitt Romney's candidacy: The less-than-truthfulness, the cluelessness about how it would be perceived in the first place (when offered by the Romney campaign as evidence of his creative problem-solving), the callousness to the vulnerable with whose care Mitt Romney was entrusted, the prioritizing of convenience over decency, and the sort of miffed arrogance with which being questioned about this issue has been greeted.

Whooooops for Seamus. And whooooops for America.

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.