“Maybe we could get over his [Mitt Romney’s] driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car if he’d just admit it was because he was too cheap to hire a dog-sitter. Maybe.”— Gail Collins, “The Mitt Romney Pardon,” The New York Times, December 1, 2011In ancient Rome, the senator Cato the Elder, no matter what the occasion—not merely speeches, but even parties, when, then as now, attendees undoubtedly preferred to talk about anything but affairs of state—would invariably urge anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot, “Carthago delenda est!” (Carthage must be destroyed.) So insistent was his agitation that it’s an open question whether colleagues eventually declared war on Carthage simply to shut Cato up.
The same kind of obsession appears to have gripped Gail Collins. Perhaps in school, she learned about Cato’s fixation and its impact. Now she’s applying the same principle in her own way. Since 2007, she has told readers constantly about how Mitt Romney, on vacation some years ago, strapped his Irish setter Seamus to the roof of the family station-wagon on a long trip to Canada.
This little anecdote, which reached a climax (if you want to call it that) with Seamus pooping in mid-drive—and the future Massachusetts governor and Presidential aspirant demonstrating his managerial and problem-solving skills by driving into a gas station, commandeering a hose, washing down dog and car, and continuing on his merry way—shows the capitalist-turned-politico to be a little bit weird, to be sure. If you’re a liberal, I wouldn’t dispute the point if you saw it as symbolizing how Romney's private-equity capital, Bain Capital, would treat workers in companies it acquired: like dogs. (Seamus, having, like all good dogs, gone to heaven since the long-ago incident, is unavailable for comment on this point.)
This little tale would undoubtedly have disappeared in its original source—a seven-part series in the Boston Globe, just as Romney was launching his first Presidential campaign—except for the oxygen provided by The New York Times op-ed columnist. Now, it has attracted such notice that it has even spawned a Web site, Dogs Against Romney.
I remember the first time I read Collins’ description of this. I laughed like crazy, feeling confirmed in my distrust of the businessman-turned-politico. Then, while continuing the habit I had developed back when she was with New York Newsday of reading her religiously, I noticed something even odder than this odd tale itself: Collins couldn’t seem to stop writing about it. The joke stopped being funny around the third time I read it--and believe me, Collins has written about this far more than that.
How much has she discussed it? Well, a September 13 post on the Politifact Web site offered a count of 19 times that Collins has mentioned this. It has slipped into at least a few more columns since then.
In her most recent column, quoted above, I thought that Collins would finally make it through a whole article without talking about this. But it turned out to be one long tease. Perhaps under the (in this case, erroneous) principle of saving the best for last, she tantalized longtime readers, only to leave the incident of the dog on the car roof as the conclusion.
Why does Collins write so insistently—fixedly—on this subject? A few possibilities:
* Maybe she thinks some reader hasn’t heard this story. Late in his career, asked why he continually to hustle, New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio replied, “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time. I owe him my best.” Perhaps, even despite the 24/7 circus of cable news and blogs (not to mention old-fashioned media of newspapers and network news), Collins figures, somebody out there has, astonishingly, never heard this revealing story.
* Maybe she believes she needs to help baby boomers who are finally showing their age. The first sign of this could be loss of memory--though, if the prototypical boomer has somehow forgotten about this story after the many, many times Collins has mentioned it, that must be one very, very forgetful reader.
* Maybe she believes in giving her Times readers what they want. Occasionally you hear about rock ‘n’ rollers expressing annoyance about playing their hits (Joni Mitchell has chastised fans calling for “Both Sides Now” by noting that Van Gogh was never asked to repaint “Starry, Starry Night”). But readers are a bit different. Still, if Times readers liked this once, Collins might figure, why not employ the virtue of recycling beyond its original environmental context?
* Maybe she has one of those maddening computer glitches. It’s possible that Collins has one of those programs that, when a certain combination of keystrokes appears--“Mitt Romney,” say--her word processing software automatically inserts the story of Seamus. Perhaps by this time she wants to turn this feature off but can’t. I bet her operating system is Microsoft. Mac users praise their computers while carping about those from Bill Gates, whom they know as “the anti-Christ.” This could explain everything. Even with such a persistent problem, though, there are remedies. I know computer-savvy people who could troubleshoot this. If matters get really bad, there’s always Best Buy’s Geek Squad, anyway.
* Maybe she (or at least her copy) is possessed by Evil Supernatural Forces. Speaking of the anti-Christ….Demonic possession can’t be entirely ruled out. I can offer some referrals here, too, though exorcisms aren’t normal specialties of the priests I know.
* Maybe, to concentrate on her next book project, she needs to conserve her energy. A deadline always pops up sooner than expected. A long-range book project requires sustained thinking--something hard to accomplish when a newspaper editor is breathing down your neck, wondering when that copy will appear. Collins already took one leave of absence for such a project in 2007. Taking another would strain relationships at the Times.
Whatever is happening, Collins needs to solve it and move on. If they haven’t already, Times readers are going to gripe soon that there are too many issues these days to waste their time on poop (metaphorically and actually speaking) from a long time ago. As a corollary, they’re also likely to complain that they’re missing out on more recent, even more astonishing satiric targets because Collins has her eyes off the ball.
The Times op-ed page takes itself far too seriously, so it needs all the levity it can muster. Right now, Collins and colleague Maureen Dowd are the only ones on the job.
The strain of it shows. Writing about the same politician, day after day after day, can sap a writer’s powers of invention. I tremble to think of what might have happened to Dowd’s sanity if she had to go once more into the well to dredge up her “Bushfellas” trope—and yet, even she didn’t use the idea anywhere near as extensively as Collins has done with Seamus Rodney.
If a strain on the imagination could tax a Pulitzer Prize winner such as Dowd, think of what it can do to Collins. And let’s not even think about the possibility that Romney might make it to a second term.
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