It’s a damnable shame, I had such high hopes for her up till now. Alas, no longer, although I suppose there’s still barely a ghost of a glimmer of a slim snowball’s shadow of an outside chance that she’s just the latest victim of yet another shitlib con/hit job, career-destroying words put into her mouth by shady malefactors while she wasn’t paying close enough attention. I certainly wouldn’t bet money I couldn’t afford to lose on it, but it’s just possible. Just. Maybe. I guess.
“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.” – Ronnie Coleman
Writing an interesting and engaging article often requires a significant amount of time and energy.
Writing an entire book, especially one that is insightful and captivating, is truly an incredible accomplishment, because it requires SO MUCH WORK AND TIME to complete the mission.
In the political publishing industry, however, the top “authors” have gamed the system entirely. The entire genre is a fraudulent mess of epic proportions.
I’m only 34, but I’ve been in the media and publishing space for quite some time, having written for pretty much every major right of center publication you could think of. I have no idea how long this massive grift has been occurring, but I can assure you it’s been going on for decades.
One such high profile example of political ghostwriting dates back to 1956, with Profiles In Courage, the 1956 volume that helped to establish the intellectual and political bonafides of John F. Kennedy.
Now, there has been a noticeable distinction between how “insiders” and “outsiders” have interpreted the flaming dumpster fire that is the publicity tour related to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s upcoming book. The general public seems confused about the idea that Noem seemingly didn’t know about so many things that were in *her own book*.
From stories of psychopathically mass-shooting her animals to concocted tales of talking tough to Kim Jong Un, Noem’s answers for her claimed antics, and the repeated falsehoods claimed under her namesake, have gone from bad to worse.
It’s a given that many of us in the space already wrote off the idea Noem would write any of her own book. But she has taken the laziness of politician “publishing” to new heights. She apparently didn’t proofread any of her book either, despite narrating the audiobook. Given the historic botch job, I’m glad that the public is starting to ask more questions about this incredibly sketchy operation.
The Kristi Noem saga has exposed an open secret about the political publishing industry: a tiny percentage of “authors” in the space write their own books. And those real authors are often smothered by fake authors with a machine in place to promote their fake autobiographies, which take time and opportunity away from those who have put in the work.
For politicians, I would estimate that maybe 1 percent write their own books. Some spend occasional time with their ghostwriter in order to best express their personality and ideas. Others, like Noem, just mail it in entirely, and have the ghostwriter rely upon public material from speeches and appearances.
Yeah, well, it’s kinda hard to decide which of the two likely scenarios is worse: that she neither wrote NOR read the thing and is therefore blissfully unaware of the kind of bizarre, godawful stories related therein, or *shudder* that she IS aware of them, because they’re, y’know, TRUE and ACCURATE, and she sees nothing wrong with the material, is perfectly comfortable with it, and frankly just can’t understand what all the uproar is about.
I admit I didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about Da Guv before all this, but what little I did know I liked; excepting a few decisions on which she arguably screwed the pooch, her heart during her tenure as Governor has seemed for the most part to be in the right place, Constitutionally-speaking. After getting off on exactly the wrong foot initially, her flat refusal later to exercise dictatorial power over her constituents during the FauxVid psyop/trial run, further fleshed out by some admirably thoughtful, high-minded, and rare-as-hen’s-teeth perorations explicating the specific limits on what she was and was not empowered to do as the Governor of a sovereign State under the US Constitution, I found extremely appealing.
Tough; capable; feisty; determined; far and away the most breathtakingly attractive politician (in the strictly physical sense, which I know I’m not allowed to either notice or mention right out loud, but hey, fuck all y’all) in America today, male or female—Kristi Noem seemed to have the Right Stuff, veritable bucketloads of it. By every indication well on the way to solid renown, respect, and success as a national political figure, all she really had to do was simply not fuck up. Sadly, after this needless, self-inflicted kill shot, I preminisce no return to the salad days for poor Mrs Noem. Stick a fork in her, she is well and truly done. If the woman is as reckless, clueless, weird, and just plain D-M-U-B dumb as this spectacular crash ’n’ burn suggests, could be we dodged a bullet with her. Which makes the Great Noem Flameout of ’24 an occasion not for sadness over what might have been, but for a heavy sigh of relief for being spared in the nick of time.
2
- Entries
Is a thing. la? Sometime you just have to put down the dog. Sometimes it’s age, sometimes it’s just gone bad. But a boy’s gotta do what a boy’s gotta do You seen the mvie. Do you pass the ticket to the vet, or do you man up and do it yourself?
I’ve put down a couple of dogs, myself. No regrets; it was the right thing to do. In both cases, the animal:
had lived to full expectancy,
was medically in extremis,
passed peacefully, without fear or pain.
The decision to pull the trigger is terrible; it means taking responsibility. Maybe it’s not a big thing, but it’s a very real thing.
This Noem thing is different. I assume she didn’t shoot her dog “in the face” or subject the animal to outright cruelty. But Noem’s dog was perfectly healthy. I’m not shooting a healthy dog unless the dog is presently killing someone, full stop. If my dog was merely a hard case I couldn’t live with, I’d leave it Animal Rescue. It’s not my job to figure out when a dog doesn’t deserve to live.
Noem’s dog frolicked and chased birds. This behavior rendered the dog unsuitable for Noem’s purposes, so she terminated it. That’s a terrible decision in a different way.
As you may recall, Tom, I had my own experience with shooting my poor, aging, half-crippled dog Bert, which I wrote about here at the time. It was painful but, as Raymond Chandler said, a man ought to be able to shoot his own dog if he has to. My problem with Noem, like yours, isn’t based on any squeamishness about pet euthanasia, but about core dishonesty and obliviousness.
…dishonesty and obliviousness…
Yeah, you’re on to something. It’s not the act, it’s the mindset which expects some credit from such an act.
“If my dog was merely a hard case I couldn’t live with, I’d leave it Animal Rescue.”
Great idea, let some family with little kids adopt the “hard case” because you don’t have the guts to do the right thing.
Seen at Ace (I think): “Kristi Noem is the Michael Vick of Sarah Palins.”
Ow ow oh fuckity ow. Why do I even bother to write, when people just hurt me like that?
Ace is a fat ugly idiot, no surprise.
As I understood it the dog went bonkers and killed a significant number of a neighbor farm’s flock of chickens, just for fun. When confronted by Kristi to try to stop it from killing more chickens the dog tried to bite it’s owner.
If that’s the case, isn’t it a little different?
Still, her reaction as if she didn’t even know what was in her own book is perplexing. To say the least.
But,.given the media’s outright lies about Trump, I’m wondering what part.of this whole story is true and what part of it is made up out of whole cloth.
As far as I know the only thing agreed upon from what I’ve heard is that she put down a dog and she has now cancelled her book tour.
It was the made-up tale of meeting Kim Jong Un and then doubling down when called on it instead of just owning up that got me more than anything. That’s dishonest at best, just out and out cray-cray at worst.
As I understood it the dog went bonkers and killed a significant number of a neighbor farm’s flock of chickens, just for fun. When confronted by Kristi to try to stop it from killing more chickens the dog tried to bite it’s owner.
If that’s the case, isn’t it a little different?
Yes. That is different from the story I read. Now, a chicken-killing dog is the kind of “hard case” I was talking about before. You can’t live with that on a farm. And you can’t retrain the animal.
A dog like that can be a perfectly good family pet in a non-chicken-farming context. There’s nothing shameful or wrong about giving a healthy dog a second chance, so long as it’s not vicious to humans or other dogs etc. (And no, snapping at a human in a state of intense excitement is not the same as viciousness.)
That said, the story being as you say, Noem was in her rights to off the dog. I probably wouldn’t do it that way myself, but hey, I wasn’t there. I don’t really know what that dog was like. The decision to put it down was Noem’s rightful, private decision.
I’ve kept chickens, goats, sheep, and pigs, in addition to various family pets. Dead bodies all over the place. I know that side of the story.
I also know, Kristi Noem is a politician. It turns out she’s a bad politician who deserves to be completely defeated at life. We on the right cannot afford to be associated with losers like this.
Noem took a private decision and tried to cast it to the public as hard-headed leadership. But her kill count isn’t all that impressive, and somehow her story doesn’t check out. I can’t quite put my finger on it; Mike hinted at it, and maybe time will tell.
I just get the stench of a character that is grandiose, pretentious and callous. I don’t mind what she did; she just smells bad.
“Yes. That is different from the story I read.”
And you “read” what exactly? You read some other commentor making up BS? You read what?
I’m not 100% sure, Barry. The story I thought I knew, was that Noem took the dog, a pointer, on a pheasant hunt. The dog went crazy and chased the pheasants, so Noem deemed it untrainable.
That really happened. What also happened was Noem visited a neighbor and the dog escaped from Noem’s vehicle and started killing chickens. That’s the part I didn’t know, before. So the first reporting I read was probably slanted, and my views could be a little more nuanced.
If I give Noem, the benefit of the doubt, then killing the dog was justified. But just because something is justified doesn’t mean the person doing it is a good person. Noem said she hated that dog. So, was the killing a tough but necessary decision, or was it a fit of pique? As a journalist might say, this raises questions about Noem’s fitness for a position of trust and authority.
And the closer I look, the less I like her. She’s defensive. She’s got her ego mixed up in this. She has told at least one provable lie to make herself look great. The question isn’t whether it’s OK to kill a dog; it’s whether this person has the judgment and character for a national leadership role.
Yeah, no, I don’t think so.
“She has told at least one provable lie…”
And you know this how? You “read” it somewhere?
I don’t give a flip what you or anyone else think about Noem. I do care when the lies get really deep and when they go around the world three times before the truth gets its pants on.
Noem is on my side at the moment and she may be flawed, but she has a far better track record at this point then 97.9% of all the other republicans, so until proven different I’ll take her side. I really don’t give a damn if a self biography tries to make the subject look better. I don’t know of any that don’t.
I’m with Kenny on this, there is a concerted effort by a group of people, most telling outright lies, to sink Noem. Many are people that I know are Trump haters and that tells me everything.
I try not to repeat lies or falsehoods or half truths. I fail at that just like everyone else occasionally.
To be clear, the Noem looks better and better to me based on the people trying their best to sink her. Now what we have as the real story is told, is justification for the original hatred.
And, while she was at it, decided to off the family billy goat for being smelly and gross, as billy goats are. She doesnt come off as somebody who appreciated the gravity of what she was doing, just fed up angry, ‘fixing’ the problem without considering alternatives.
Farm animals including dogs are put down when they become problems. Absolutely normal. Telling the truth about it takes a bit of courage.
The right does the lefts work for them all the damn time, and here we are once again. I find it pathetic.
The story related here and what I had heard are very different.
Which leads me to believe there is a hit job being done on Ms. Noem…
“hit job”
Bingo. People of the so called “right” are more than willing to “put down” Ms Noem on nothing more than some BS comment they read.
She’s not perfect and neither is anyone else. And I don’t know if she is good or bad in reality. AT the moment I’m leaning toward she’s an absolute WINNER based upon the hit job currently in progress. When someone scares the left, and the GOPe types then they are my type.
Let’s mull this over for a second:
Sounds suspiciously like it could be the profile of a NeverTrump?
Over at insty I find a high correlation between neverTrump and neverNoem.
It sounds just plain dumb, and nothing to brag about. The dog was an immature hunting dog, so it had that instinct. Putting such a dog in range of a flock of chickens would have pretty predictable results. Shooting the dog is just way overboard, a shock collar would be much more appropriate, and the behavior could have been trained out of it. It strikes me that she just doesn’t have very good judgment, either to do what she did, or to talk about it – it’s like doubling down on a dumb mistake.
A reminder – unlike the pussy’s that cannot fathom the thought of bad animals being put down, Noem was probably #1 in the state covid reaction in that she did not lock the state down, not perfect mind you but better than the other R govs. And she was opposed to a mandated vax even though she got it herself. She passed legislation that kept employers from forcing it on their employee’s as well.
Thanks to Mike’s Eyrie, here is a picture of some of the Noem haters:
I like her more with every comment opposed.
Okay, Barry, you win. I take back what I said about how Kristi Noem deserves to be defeated at life. I wish her continued success in her home state.
But there is no way she’s ready for Nationals, right now. She just took a major injury in training. By the time the next Olympics rolls around, she might be past her prime.
“But there is no way she’s ready for Nationals, right now.”
Then who is? Don’t wet your panty’s, just answer the question.
Send me your picture and we’ll add it to the above…
Here’s your answer: nobody. Nobody I know of, anyway.
That’s at the national level. The local level is different. The national level is pretty hopeless at this point.
Maybe the problem is you.
Myself, I’m coming to think of politics, at least at the national level, as sorta akin to RFKjr’s “brain worms”: the longer you stay in The Game, the deeper it damages and corrupts you, unless you’re a remarkably stout, resolute, determined individual.
Consider: how many basically good, decent, honorable men and women have we seen soar on eagle’s wings into Swamp politics, propelled by the very best of intentions and the highest of ideals, only to watch them shrivel into just another grubby, greasy Yertle McTurtle-clone over time, bereft of all capacity to feel a tingle of shame at their willfully abandoned integrity? I can think of several depressing examples just from the last decade or so, and I’m sure y’all can as well. Such miserable worms are precisely what Lewis meant when he spoke of “men without chests.”
Demonstrating once again the awesome perspicacity and foresight of the Founders and their bone-deep revulsion towards the very idea that their posterity might someday blandly tolerate the existence of such a noxious creature as the “career politician.” The more we’ve ignored their warning and personal example, the farther afield we’ve strayed from their profound wisdom, the worse things have gotten for us. Until finally, here all are: hopelessly lost, with darkness fast descending all around us.
“Consider: how many basically good, decent, honorable men and women have we seen soar on eagle’s wings into Swamp politics…”
JMO, but I’m at the point in life that I believe the vast majority* of those entering the political arena are dishonest and corrupt. When I look back I realize many that we thought were on the American side were actually in it for theirselves first and their friends second. They never put Americans first. America first is rare and when you find it, best support it.
*I’ll be generous and suggest that 15% or so are not completely corrupt
I’m going to add –
How easily we are fooled. The GOPe had us pegged long ago, and they worked us over pretty well. Let’s just take the states of NC and SC and look at our senators…
OK, Ted Budd (NC), the jury is still out on him. The other 3, deep state and corrupt to the core.
Shoot, Barr, I’ve grown cynical enough in my dotage that even 15% seems way too high now. I was thinking more in terms of a low enough number of ’em to be statistically invisible, although I do think there’s still a few uncut newbs that at least start off okay. Then again, though, the system is so rotten and cored-out that almost nobody but a natural-born dirtbag would be attracted to it anymore. Bring up the old principle of noblesse oblige to most ProPols, for centuries a given amongst the Ruling Class, and today’s scoundrels wouldn’t understand it AT. ALL.
Then again again, though, the same Ruling Class also exercised droit du signeur in those days, sooooo…. 😉
Further thoughts: A major factor in our decline is that FederalGovCo, end-to-end, all branches and offices, is now the nearly exclusive province of lawyers, rather than the tradesmen, farmers, shopkeepers, and such-like commended to us by the Founders.
Today, we live under a bloated, opaque governmental edifice built by lawyers for their own enrichment, influence, protection, and above all else concealment. Everything they do revolves around maintaining the structure they devised for themselves, manipulate, and hide behind.
Whether he knew it or not, Shakespeare was really onto something when he wrote “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Of course, the fact that he gave that line to one of the villains of the piece suggests he DIDN’T know; taken in context, ole Will certainly didn’t approve of the sentiment. Quite the opposite, actually. Wonder how he’d feel about it now, if he was with us and could see how things have worked out since his own day. HRMMMM… 😉
Whether he knew it or not Shakespeare was correct 🙂
All governments will end up authoritarian eventually unless enough rope is used often enough to provide an incentive to remain on the side of “less gov good”. We’re past the stage where that occurs and on to the next where there is an eventual reaction. At least I hope there will be a reaction.
To clarify, I meant 15% of the right are not corrupt when they go into politics. Of course that’s just a WAG. And I’m certain a fairly high percentage of those are then corrupted…