What's the Buzz?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist 

I listened to the Vice Presidential Debate on National Public Radio yesterday evening and came away relatively unimpressed with the quality of the exchange between the two candidates.   Both Senator Harris and Vice President Pence managed to present their partisan talking points, and both strived to make the heads of their tickets look good.  Neither candidate came off as the out-of-control crackpot that Trump had been during the first presidential debate, although Pence did consistently refuse to  quit talking when his time had expired, and he seemed to relish talking over the female moderator.  It was also apparent that neither candidate was overly concerned with answering the questions posed by the moderator and ignored those that they did not want to answer.

Overall Senator Harris did the better job of answering questions and trying to fit her responses into the time slots allotted by the debate organizers.  She was ferocious on attacking the Trump administration's lack of an effective response to the coronavirus pandemic, and her comments on the senseless killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police was heartbreakingly real.  Pence, on the other hand, was little more than Donald Trump with the rage dialed down.

NPR's political commentators said after the debate ended that they doubted  that the exchanges between the two candidates had changed the minds of many voters, and that was my take on it as well.   Harris and Pence were there to remind their party faithful of where their parties stood on a variety of issues, and both succeeded in carrying out that mission.

That's what I heard, and I came away convinced that my debate experience had been just as real as that enjoyed by my friends who had watched the exchange on television.  That's the way it usually works - and I am a good listener.

But last night the folks watching the debate on television apparently got a much better show than did us radio listeners.  It turns out the real star of the debates wasn't Senator Harris or Vice President Pence - or even the moderator.  The real star of the show was a persistent fly who landed on Mike Pence's cropped white hair and proceeded to make himself at home there for about two minutes.  The television audience was treated to a significant break from the motonous political back-and-forth, a break that the radio listeners missed out on.

Mike Pence's fly quickly became the star of the evening.

This morning there are over a dozen new Twitter accounts bearing names that reference Pence's fly, one of which already has over a hundred thousand followers - and the snark is coming fast and furious with some  openly referring to Pence as the new Lord of the Flies! 

Fortunately for all concerned, the SWAT team was not called in!

Mikey may have not won the debate, but he clearly emerged from the affair with the most buzz - and with that he and Mother should both be very proud!