America isn’t buying South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s testimony on the gravity of Cricket’s sins.
Say what you will about the Bidens, but when their dog Commander went on a White House biting spree, they didn’t walk him out to the South Lawn for a summary execution.
There are differences one can find between Commander, a German Shepherd sent to live in a less stressful environment, and Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehair pointer who took a bullet from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem—a story the governor shares with baffling enthusiasm in an upcoming book.
There are also differences between the scenes of the two dogs’ crimes—the hardscrabble prairie of the Dakotas, where Noem delivered the harsh sentence some 20 years ago, and the modern-day White House, a building she may now never occupy as a result.
Political-year memoirs are designed to deliver one message: « Look how awesome I am. » They are usually a chore to navigate, thick with self-congratulation and sparse in newsmaking revelations. In that regard, you have to hand it to the governor for sparking days of buzz ahead of the release of No Going Back. The problem is, the title proves ironically prophetic as she watches her political aspirations collapse amid a stunning failure to read the room.
America isn’t buying her testimony on the gravity of Cricket’s sins.
City and suburban dog owners would do well to grasp that in our rural hinterlands, harsh fates sometimes await dogs who pose a danger to people or an impediment to the function of a farm or ranch environment. That said, Noem’s book doesn’t exactly paint a picture of Cujo terrorizing the landscape.
