The Biden flyswatters are sold out.
Hurry now, though, and you can have a Mike Pence bobble-head with Insecta Diptera perched just above his study brow – as seen on TV.
Flies seek things rotten. When that now-famous fly chose a place to land in last week's vice presidential debate, Pence's right brain proved irresistible.
Right brain: associated with reason.
The fly heard talk of our pandemic. It heard Pence say, with a face as straight as a carpenter's square, that "from the very first day" Donald Trump "put the health of Americans first."
That may be the best joke since Abbott and Costello loaded the bases.
"Who got sick first at the White House?"
"No, What."
"That was my question. Who?"
"No, What."
"OK, then, who got it third?"
"That's what I want to find out."
The fly heard Pence say that under Trump, the federal response to COVID-19 was "the greatest national mobilization since World War II."
First, it's one heck of an insult to post-World War II America. We must have inhabited the past 75 years in a bucket of chicken.
Second, more Americans have died from this virus than from all U.S. wars since.
Anyone with eyes to see – and a fly has three – knows that when the virus came calling on these shores, Trump made it a game. He lied about its severity. He ridiculed governors who, unlike him, took it seriously.
Now he has the disease that has killed so many, for goodness sakes, and he acts like Ferris Bueller in a borrowed convertible.
"The biggest mistake people make in public life is not telling the truth, particularly in something with as much public interest as (the virus) because you know the real story is going to come out."
Who said that? Rachel Maddow? Hillary Clinton?
No, those words come from Texas' own Sen. John Cornyn, ruminating for Houston Chronicle editors about Trump's current straits, credibility-wise.
Cornyn the candidate suddenly is emphasizing the candid in a race that's much, much tighter than handicappers ever imagined.
If Democrat MJ Hegar defeats him, she'll have to stand in line for rightful props because so many Republican senators who hitched their stars to the liar-in-chief are similarly endangered. Right, Lindsey Graham?
The virus is just one of countless venues on which, with Trump as its leader and role model, the GOP has become a liar's banquet.
The outrageous effort to cast doubt about the security of mail-in ballots is built on lies.
One of the most revealing moments of the Trump years was the other day when a reporter called the administration's hand on a tall tale about absentee ballots tossed in a river.
When repeatedly asked, "What river?" Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany became Donald Rumsfeld who, of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said, "We know where they are," then demonstrated he had no idea.
The river turned out to be a ditch. A bag of mail indeed was found there. However, postal officials found no ballots in it.
End of story, but not the end of GOP horror stories about the perils of any alternative to standing in ghastly lines on Election Day.
One of the most stunning insults to voters of all stripes was Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's unfathomable directive to limit counties to one ballot drop box.
His claim that this is about ballot security is as empty and weather-beaten as all the other GOP machinations to tamp down the vote.
Texas voters will remember this when Abbott is on the ballot in 2022.
Back to the presidential race, and to a fly's nod to the rot that has become of the Party of Trump.
Kamala Harris had a sound rejoinder when Pence said the administration's reckless posture on masks and social distancing "is about respecting the freedom of the American people."
Said Harris: "You respect the American people when you tell them the truth."
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
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