Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on Nikki Haley. After all, the Covid confinement has made us all a little nutty. How nutty, you ask? Well, I recently participated in a Facebook poll that wanted to know “How should cats wear pants?” Note the question was not should they wear pants, but rather when wearing pants, how should they be worn. Since you ask, I voted for front paws only because, duh, I’m not a monster.
So, yeah, that’s concerning.
But here’s the thing. I’m a humor writer. Allegedly. I can literally burn an hour voting on cat pants while a higher standard is held for, say, a former governor and ambassador to the United Nations who looks like everyone’s idea of the hot elementary school principal and makes no secret of her presidential aspirations.
To be fair, it was South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who read the room, finally, and ordered the Confederate flag removed from the state capital a few years back. I was impressed at her gumption but that was before she started cozying up to undesirables in Washington, D.C.
And so it came to pass that Nikki Haley, taking a page from the Romanoff, er, Trump family playbook, went outta her damn mind on Twitter last week when her nephew’s popcorn didn’t arrive in time for his birthday.
Using her considerable platform, Haley tweeted her outrage: “OK @PopcornFactory two messed up birthday orders missed delivery dates with no explanation. First time I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Second one tells me not to buy from you again. #disappointednephew.
Lord t’ mercy.
A chorus of Karens throughout the land said: “Dang. I think she went a little too far there…”
Haley’s mantra is “You have to fight for what you believe in and don’t back down!” which sounds plucky when you’re dissing perceived evildoers in China and Russia, less so when you’re fighting, uh, a mail-order popcorn service.
Coupla things, Hails. You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Using your considerable social media clout to bully a mail-order company during a pandemic? Shug, that’s tacky as a cash bar at a wedding. You were raised better.
Having a hissy in public over something so mundane is the sort of small-minded rubbish a Trump would tweet. I suppose your unwavering loyalty to the Grifter-in-Chief has numbed you to bad behavior a bit. (See dogs/fleas above.)
Better to see the big picture, and to do that, you will have to step away, remove your lips from the unwholesome carcass they are affixed to lately and take stock of where we’re at.
For starters, your buddy appointed a fellow to head up the massive U.S. Postal Service whose resume highlight was apparently “once bought a book of stamps.” Soooo, between that and the pandemic ravaging workplaces, yeah, your popcorn’s gonna be late.
More than 165,000 Americans are dead; 45 million have lost their jobs and 30 million face eviction, Yeah, super sorry about your popcorn problem.
Celia Rivenbark does not need any stamps, packaging supplies or insurance.