Dog Days

Noem man's land

BOLT UPRIGHT: Good evening, I’m Bolt Upright and this is Received Opinion!

[Vomitous music. On screen behind UPRIGHT: Limited-animation cartoon of South Dakota Governor KRISTI NOEM blasting a rifle at a carnival “Shoot-the-Puppy” game with the caption DOGGY STYLE.]

Violence in the Middle East, and hey, did the presumptive presidential candidate of a major party basically promise to rule as a dictator? Well, to hell with being called “antisemitic” and “liberal biased” for bringing it up. Yes, I’m a little drunk, but you’re not paying attention, because we’re talking tonight about the Republican lady who killed her dog!

[CUT TO clips of NOEM defending the execution of her puppy and saying Joe Biden’s dog should also be killed.]

OK, it should be an easy lay-up but this is, after all, Received Opinion, so we’re gonna skip right over the usual clips of Democrats saying oh how horrible blah blah blah and get right to our Decision Desk team so they can bothsides the hell out of this thing and Republicans will keep coming on this show.

[Cut to a slightly shocked-looking Decision Desk team: CHAFE DRAMATURGY, wearing a Hadley hand-tailored silk linen jacket with a faded grey vintage Black fucking Dog t-shirt and boat shoes; PEONI DOYENNE, wearing a Dior houndstooth twinset, a pearl choker, and Blahnik suede periwinkle pumps; and BUFF TOEHOLD, dressed like a 70’s vice cop but with Santoni brown Oxford brogues and a $23,000 Rolex.]

Let’s start with you, Buff, I can’t wait to hear your take on this.

TOEHOLD: Just like you liberal media types, Bolt, to try and spin this before I —

UPRIGHT: Get to the damn point, Buff, or I’ll set that dog on you again.

TOEHOLD: [Startled] What! You, I — I can’t believe you’d —

UPRIGHT: Woof woof, Buff! Come on.

TOEHOLD: Alright, dammit! Well, first of all, like the governor said, the coastal elites don’t understand life on the farm, where it’s kill or be killed. You think that if we didn’t kill cattle, they wouldn’t kill us? Have you ever looked a steer in the eye? I have! I’ve gone to the slaughterhouse and waded through the manure and stared those big monsters dead in the eye and I can tell you if they thought they could extend their miserable lives a few minutes more by trampling you into the manure and caving your skull in and killing you, they’d do it! That’s why I eat steak three times a week, not because I want to die of a heart attack like my stupid wife says, but because I want to show these animals who’s boss!

UPRIGHT: And that goes for little puppy dogs, too, Buff? Didn’t you have a puppy when you were a boy, Buff?

TOEHOLD: [Snarling] What’s that got to do with anything!

UPRIGHT: A cute snuggly little puppy you liked to pet and hug and love, Buff?

TOEHOLD: So what if I did!

UPRIGHT: A long-eared little fella, wasn’t he, full of pep, loved to play, what was his name, Buff —

TOEHOLD: Alright, goddamnit, you know I had a puppy, Bolt! And yeah, I loved that puppy! His name was Charly, not with an i.e. but with a y like the retard in that movie, and he was a cocker spaniel with floppy ears and a rolling walk, jaunty, you know? I pet him when I could, scratched his chin and patted his head, and he used to dance around so cute and try and get me to play with him, and I tried to play with him, I really did try to, but I had so much homework to do and also I had the braces, those goddamn braces on my legs because I was —

[TOEHOLD pounds his thighs with his fists.]

TOO! WEAK! TOO! WEAK! And then one day I got up and looked around and said where’s Charly but Charly — Charly wasn’t there — he wasn’t there and my parents said he had to go away and I said why, why did he have to and they said it was for the best and there was, I didn’t, I mean I couldn’t, there was no argument I could —

DOYENNE: [Touching TOEHOLD’s arm] Oh, Buff, I had no idea. That is so very sad.

[A tearful TOEHOLD jerks his arm away from DOYENNE.]

TOEHOLD: SHUT UP! Shut up, you goddamn old drunk RINO bitch! Goddamn you all, you don’t care about me or Charly, you’re all a bunch of liberal traitors and I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna wring your necks, I’m gonna cut your throats, I’m gonna shoot you and leave you in a gravel pit, I’m gonna kill you all —

[In tears TOEHOLD flees the stage.]

UPRIGHT: Tempers flare!

DOYENNE: I am torn, Bolt, because on the one hand, as you know, in every conflict I always like to side with the winner, and the feed on my iPhone tells me Governor Noem is just not pulling this one off. On the other hand, what could be weaker than a little puppy?

[Apparently unnoticed by anyone, DRAMATURGY has wandered off.]

I’m not saying I could kill a puppy myself, no no, don’t we all love puppies? And yet I can understand the impulse, because take the protestors at Columbia. You know I went there and tried to talk to them, I even brought those little cans of mixed drinks, not like they make at the Carlyle but you know, la vie bohème and all that. And do you know, they wouldn’t give me the time of day! And I thought, “why, you insolent puppies” — because that’s an expression grand people used to use when I was a girl, and I always wanted to be a grand person myself. And it struck me — these protestors, they were actually puppies — silly, full of energy and high spirits, and cute, you know — but you still wanted to kill them, you wanted the police to come in and just lift up their batons and smash them to pieces because they were so stupid and disrespectful! So in that way, at least, I understand what the governor was getting at. Does that seem strange?

UPRIGHT: Forgive me, Peoni, but that sounds totally insane.  I — hold on…

[New York City Mayor ERIC ADAMS comes in accompanied by DRAMATURGY and a bunch of COPS, who spread out across the set.]

ADAMS: Hello, folks. I am New York City mayor Eric Adams. Now I know this might seem strange, me being on this program, but these are strange times, and when Mr. Dramaturgy approached the officer at 30 Rock I understood that there needed to be a high level intervention. See, the people on this show, the way they are acting now, this is not them, OK? Because this is due to a kind of mind gas that was released in the dressing rooms that has made these people act the way they do.

[Everyone looks stunned.]

And we have it on good authority that the gas was released by outside agitators from An-TEE-fa.

[Everyone throws up their hands and goes “OH!” like it all makes sense now.]

And I just want to say that once you have rested — and that goes for Mr. Toehold, who we have taken down with a tranquilizer dart — once you have rested sufficiently in the tents we have set up for that purpose and the gas wears off, all of you will be my invited guests at a high level event at Gracie Mansion, with bottle service and some killer DJs. Now let’s gooooo…

[Sick beat drops, strobe lights, everybody dances.]