{"id":24063,"date":"2024-10-21T21:06:28","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T01:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?p=24063"},"modified":"2024-10-21T21:06:28","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T01:06:28","slug":"an-interview-a-deep-fryer-and-arnold-palmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/10\/an-interview-a-deep-fryer-and-arnold-palmer\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview, A Deep Fryer, and Arnold Palmer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got two weeks left.<\/h3>\n

As I write this it\u2019s Monday night. As you read it, it will probably be Tuesday, two weeks before Election Day. Election day is your last possible day to vote; the actual voting is going on in many states across the country right now. My tiny Jefferson County, Ohio, has said they\u2019ve had record turnout already. Nobody knows if that\u2019s a good or a bad sign.<\/p>\n

Yes, this is my weekly rundown of all the presidential election news I can remember since last week. Please keep referring back to my boilerplate on why the Catholic Church has no political party and it\u2019s not a sin to vote your conscience<\/a>.\u00a0 I won\u2019t be tolerating any spiritual abuse in my comment box.<\/p>\n

The politicians are in full swing, giving their closing statements to anybody who will listen. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are still circling those same swing states over and over again. They\u2019ve been in Pennsylvania so often, I bet they\u2019ve earned enough Sheetz points to get a free MTO sub. Harris went so far as to appear on Fox News of all places, where Brett Baier interrupted and patronized her and showed the wrong video clip. She handled herself so well that Baier is still offended<\/a>. But Lord knows if that\u2019s going to lead to the Republican party shedding any voters.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, this Sunday, Trump put on a comical apron and worked a shift at the McDonald\u2019s drive thru. And by \u201cworked a shift,\u201d I mean, the McDonald\u2019s was closed to the public while he was there. The employees showed him how they worked the deep fryer and make the basket go up and down. I don\u2019t know if he touched any food himself. And then he leaned out the drive thru window and handed bags of fries to Trump supporters who had been auditioned ahead of time to pretend to be customers. He\u2019s being mocked for this, as well he might be.<\/p>\n

Now, I believe I\u2019ve made it clear that I\u2019m as against Trump as I can possibly be. I don\u2019t like the man on a personal level, and what\u2019s more, I think he\u2019s a danger to our democracy. But I\u2019m going to give him a tiny bit of grace for this ridiculous stunt, because it\u2019s very like other ridiculous stunts that politicians have been pulling ever since there have been politicians. Photo ops are almost always staged. When Harris and Vance go into a Sheetz and buy snacks on camera for a funny ad, the Sheetz has been cleared of normal customers and the Secret Service is guarding the door. When a politician gets photographed washing a dish at the soup kitchen, that doesn\u2019t mean the soup kitchen is open just then. There\u2019s a good reason for that. How could the Secret Service protect Trump from any weirdo who comes through a drive thru? And it would have been ridiculously dangerous for McDonald\u2019s to let an elderly man who\u2019s never cooked in his life show up at their franchise and make French fries for actual paying customers on camera. I\u2019m not mad at him that he staged a day at work. That\u2019s just being a politician.<\/p>\n

I am, however, pretty upset that he completely dodged a question from a reporter about whether this stunt would encourage him to raise the minimum wage. He refused to answer \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d and just babbled about how beautiful the deep fryer was.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also curious that no good stalwart Evangelical Christians were offended that he was working a shift on a Sunday instead of going to church, but that point seems to have passed them by.<\/p>\n

The McDonald\u2019s stunt is not the most bizarre thing Trump has done in the past few days, however. The most bizarre thing was the speech he gave on Saturday night in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.<\/h3>\n

Latrobe happens to be the birthplace of the golfer Arnold Palmer. This is probably why Trump chose to ignore the teleprompter and start telling the audience Arnold Palmer stories for about twenty minutes. He included an anecdote about a communal shower wherein all the other showerers were fascinated by the size of Palmer\u2019s, um, seven-iron. His putter. His driver, if you will. I\u00a0 don\u2019t play golf so I\u2019m running out of euphemisms, and I have to use a euphemism because Patheos is a respectable network and we have standards here. But Trump just came out and told the story. Afterwards, he shouted that Kamala Harris was a \u201csh*t vice president.\u201d Again, I\u2019ve gotta censor that word because this is a family-friendly network, but Trump didn\u2019t. He just said it, live on camera, in front of thousands of people. I\u2019ve been trying not to burst out laughing every time I read the headlines since.<\/p>\n

I keep retweeting videos of the incidents on my social media so that EVERY SINGLE WHOLESOME TRADITIONALIST CATHOLIC who told me I was going to hell for not voting for the Party of Family Values can watch their golden calf ranting about other men\u2019s pee-pees on live television, two weeks before an election. In 2016, the usher at our Byzantine Catholic parish ranted at me in my blog comment box and lied about me because he was angry I wasn\u2019t a Republican. The pastor yelled at my husband that I was \u201cmisleading the people with grave scandal\u201d and didn\u2019t say what scandal. Frank Pavone\u2019s diehard fans harassed me and told me that I was a \u201cpro-abort;\u201d I had them in my combox speculating on all the secret abortions I\u2019d had and the kinds of porn I probably watched. We lost friends. We lost community. We were very alone for a very long time because I kept on saying that Donald Trump is not a good man. To this day, I have people informing me I shouldn\u2019t receive Holy Communion because it\u2019s apparently a mortal sin to encourage people to vote against the Peepee Man and his cronies. Well, he\u2019s yours now, Traditionalists. He\u2019s all yours. Congratulations. You\u2019re the Peepee party.<\/p>\n

And you know what? The Peepee Party could still win.<\/h3>\n

Trump and Harris are neck and neck in the polls. The House looks safer than the Senate, but you never know.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is so clearly senile that if he is elected, you\u2019ll only have the Peepee President for a few months if that. And then we get President Vance, a man with the charisma of a cinder block, who truly seems to not think that women are humans<\/a>. Vance, who is such a sniveling sychophant that he called Trump Hitler right up until he felt he could get something out of supporting Trump. Vance, who is so cruel and so unabashed about using people that he threw his own constituents under the bus<\/a> and instigated a moral panic against legal immigrants. Vance who is bought and paid for by billionaire techbro Peter Thiel<\/a>, who is the opposite of a nice person. Vance, who together with Trump is being f\u00eated and promoted by billionaire techbro Elon Musk, also not a nice person.<\/a> This bizarre political alliance between billionaire techbros who believe nothing and traditionalist Catholics is looking even more hideous than the 50-year political alliance between Evangelicals and Catholics.<\/p>\n

We could have the Peepee President and his conniving lackey. Or we could have Harris and Walz.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The choice is ours.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We\u2019ve got two weeks to make our voices heard.<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross,\u00a0<\/a>The Sorrows an<\/a>d Joys of Mary<\/a>, and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to \u201cThe Little Portion\u201d on\u00a0paypal<\/a>\u00a0or Mary Pezzulo on\u00a0venmo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve got two weeks left. As I write this it\u2019s Monday night. As you read it, it will probably be Tuesday, two weeks before Election Day. Election day is your last possible day to vote; the actual voting is going on in many states across the country right now. My tiny Jefferson County, Ohio, has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":23240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14783,181],"tags":[15675,15678,15429,4254,867,15456],"class_list":["post-24063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-christianity","category-politics","tag-arnold-palmer","tag-brett-baier","tag-kamala-harris","tag-mcdonalds","tag-trump","tag-vance"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Interview, A Deep Fryer, and Arnold Palmer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"And you know what? 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