South Dakota Gov Kristi Noem’s Self-Inflicted Wound 100x Worse than Mitt Romney Dog-on-the-Roof Incident
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s bid for Donald Trump’s VP slot on the Republican ticket blew up in recent days, unless the Trump team grossly underestimates how much Americans love their dogs and other animals.
At the end of April, prior to the scheduled release on May 7 of Noem’s new book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” The Guardian news outlet obtained a copy, and the biggest revelation appears not to be what’s wrong with politics, but what’s wrong with Noem.
Gov. Noem, who served in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011, and the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2019, prior to seeking the office of the governor, is also a hunter. Guardian writer Martin Pengelly reports that Noem writes in the book about her 14-month-old (still a puppy) wirehair pointer named Cricket.
According to an Internet source, these dogs require vigorous exercise and can be rowdy and highly exuberant when not exercised sufficiently, particularly when young. They need a confident owner.
Cricket was a female with an “aggressive personality,” writes Noem, who needed training to hunt pheasant. So Noem took Cricket out on a pheasant run with other older dogs for training. But, young girls just want to have fun. Cricket was “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”
After the outing which Noem considered ruined by Cricket, she stopped to talk with a local family, and Cricket, apparently not secured in Noem’s truck, escaped and headed for the family’s chickens, wherein chaos and chicken death ensued. Cricket was just having fun, with no idea of what was about to befall her.
“I hated that dog,” Noem recounts in the book, finding young Cricket “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” Noem appears to place the blame for that entirely on the dog, not herself.
Summary execution from Noem was near.
After her day of frolicking and joy, Cricket was then led by Noem to a gravel pit where she was shot dead.
By then, perhaps all fired up to dispatch any creature that didn’t fit Noem’s view of acceptable behavior, Noem shot a male goat she viewed as “nasty and mean,” because it wasn’t castrated (again, whose fault was that?), and who chased the kids and smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid.”
The goat also met his grim fate in the gravel pit, in a story that sounds like the South Dakota version of Tony Soprano.
Since the Guardian story and wide pick-up of the animal executions, Noem has not backed down on her position that she had to kill these animals and that the story was an illustration of making “tough, challenging decisions.” By defining the dog as a “working dog,” since it wasn’t working “properly,” that seems to justify for her the act of ending its Earthly existence. But the more Noem responds to what the majority of people see as indefensible, the bigger the hole she digs for herself in her own gravel pit.
With this tale, Noem has out-Romney’d Mitt Romney, the soon-to-be former U.S. Senator from Utah, who put Seamus, the family dog, in a carrier on top of the Romney family vehicle for a 12-hour journey in 1983. Unlike Cricket, though, Seamus lived to bark another day.
Noem remains clueless that what she did would be perceived as wrong. Death for these animals was the only option in her mind? What about rehoming, sending the dog to train with someone else? How about letting the goat have its own enclosed space and keeping the kids away? Could the goat still be neutered? Would a hose down have helped with its smell? If Noem believes these are good examples of making tough choices, she has faulty thinking and is out of touch with the American zeitgeist related to nonhuman life.
As a potential VP pick, the concern is that her judgment is this poor. We’ve already endured nearly four years of a president and VP with horrible judgment — this country can’t endure more.
“No Going Back” is not Noem’s first book. She’d written “Not My First Rodeo.” Were there no communications people, PR folks, an editor or colleagues who read the manuscript pre-publication? Someone to tell her, “Uh, this won’t play in Peoria.” With two acts of animal cruelty, Noem has managed to offend most everyone. For the successes she’s had in South Dakota as governor that have lifted her to consideration as Trump’s VP, they now are overshadowed. She will now be known for killing animals who thought they were under her protection.
Noem’s story reminded me of a friend who shared a story from his youth with me. He was probably in his 50s when he told his story of being an older teen who took Halloween candy from the younger children. Even as a grown man, he didn’t seem to recognize that what he had done as a teenager was wrong. He still thought taking candy from kids was funny. And like Noem, he didn’t have any awareness that was the type of a story you’d best just not tell anyone, as it reflects very poorly!
Mahatma Gandhi, who used nonviolent resistance in the campaign he led to obtain independence for India from British rule, said, “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Noem doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and from time to time other topics that confound her. On FB @BetheChangeforAnimals and givesendgo.com/calliescathouse.
