In this scenario you are anti-vaxxer and political ham sandwich Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and we apologize in advance for what that implies. But in this scenario you believe that for all your evident faults and shortcomings you can still redeem yourself by considering a life of public service. One problem with this is that the kind of public that wants to spend time around you is the kind of public that makes regular folks root for more bear maulings.
Kennedy, who is trying to be the next Democratic candidate for President on a platform of being a total plank, attended a dinner for various medioid flotsam and jetsam in New York, which is already a cry for help with appetizers. What promised to be a night of unrestricted tedium through bloviation turned, well, it turned New York quasi-elite hillbilly is what it did.
According to Page Six, the New York Post's daily coloring book of madness, two local past-the-sell-by-date sludge deposits, Doug Dechert and Anthony Haden-Guest, turned the evening into the kind of recurring nightmare that may convince Kennedy that he'd have a better chance of winning the nomination by seeking the endorsement of the spotted lanternflies.
Put another way, Page Sixer Mara Siegler was justified in her use of the heretofore underemployed phrase, "polemic farting."
Dechert is described here as "a gossip-columnist-turned-flak," while Haden-Guest is "an octogenarian art critic." Both phrases are euphemisms for "barely relevant barnacles on the hull of human existence," but Siegler is allowed her literary choices. Either way, an otherwise unremarkable dinner descended at the mere mention of climate change into a localized runaway greenhouse effect:
Dechert, the host of the event, became enraged and screamed at the top of his lungs: “The climate hoax!”
Haden-Guest, who appeared to have been sleeping happily for most of the dinner, was roused by the abrupt rumpus.
Haden-Guest suddenly opened his eyes and denounced his longtime pal, Dechert, calling him a “miserable blob.”
“Shut up!” implored Haden-Guest.
Dechert continued to scream wildly about the climate change “scam” while Haden-Guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously “fucking insane” and “insignificant.”
Here, it seems, Dechert sensed the need for a new rhetorical tack, and let rip a loud, prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point, “I’m farting!”
All the while, Kennedy was described as sitting silently, watching this festival of brain lesions and wondering again if being a rural zookeeper wasn't a much more productive use of his time. It is important to note here that this is exactly what Kennedy has coming to him for being (a) him, and (b) choosing his dinner companions based on who can shout loudest at pigeons after dark. It will be difficult to imagine his candidacy from this point forward without this incident. A more fitting end to his cavalcade of grift does not exist, especially with the pungent exclamation point.
Kennedy, though, will soldier on, because he will think this is as bad as it gets on the campaign trail. He is of course wrong, because already his brigades of shrieking farting non-voting supporters are gathering to make their various orifices heard on any number of subjects, from unwarranted government restrictions on the voices in their heads to Jon Gruden's lawsuit against Roger Goodell. This is the republic we have built, and while it is unlikely that either Dechert or Haden-Guest will be invited to any more dinners, political or otherwise, America has an almost unlimited stock of equally deranged bar rags available. All we can do is hope the Department of Defense isn't up to the task of deflecting the asteroid.
