Tim Walz may be bland but Donald Trump is a punchline

How was the chicken prepared? That’s the punchline to a joke that occurred to me when an avid Trump-supporting MAGA friend sent me an article calling into question some aspects of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s military service record.

Here’s the joke, which the brilliant essayist David Sedaris uses to describe the choice that voters face in the November presidential election:

A flight attendant tells her hungry passengers that they have a choice of two entrees for dinner, chicken or a pile of excrement laced with ground glass. A passenger raises his hand and asks, “How was the chicken prepared?”

Pardon the earthy descriptor for what you’ll recognize as Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. I’m not a fan of name-calling in politics or elsewhere, but, after all, it is just a joke. But it’s also an apt description of the vast disparity between the two candidates.

Our perceptions of these two campaigns are in danger of distortion. Many have been lulled into thinking that we’re choosing between two more-or-less ordinary candidates with differing visions for America, just as we do every four years. No, this year is different. And the vast distance between the two is colorfully described by a slightly coarse joke.

Why did I think of this joke when my MAGA friend brought up Walz’s service record?

Walz is mildly vulnerable on this point. He was honorably discharged from the National Guard after 24 years of service, but the Trump campaign has accused him of timing his retirement to avoid his unit’s subsequent deployment to Iraq. And he may have misstated the rank at which he retired, as well as whether he actually carried weapons of war “in war.”

Feasible defenses against these accusations are available. But I wonder if the Democrats really want to take the question of military service off the table. Walz’s service is the “chicken” available to the airline passengers, bland and not terribly exciting, but perfectly acceptable when you have only two choices.

Because also on the menu is Trump’s relationship with the military, which is fair game if Trump attacks Walz’s record. For example, the bone spurs story should be back on the table, right next to the chicken.

By way of reminder: In 1966, Trump was declared eligible for military service and he passed a physical exam. Two years later, after exhausting four education deferments, he was exempted from the draft on the basis of a diagnosis of bone spurs provided by a podiatrist who was a longtime tenant in a building owned by Trump’s father. Reportedly, in return, the doctor got favorable treatment from his landlord. We should look into this.

Of course, Trump wasn’t the only white boy with resources to connive his way out of service in Vietnam. But we should also look into the allegation that Trump called soldiers who lost their lives in service to their country “losers” and “suckers.” The charge is second-hand, but its source is Gen. John Kelly, whom Trump appointed as his chief of staff. If you don’t want to believe that Trump actually called the fallen soldiers “losers,” then you have to believe that Kelly just made this up, which is a bigger stretch.

After all, we already know what Trump said about John McCain. Anyone who flies off an aircraft carrier, even in peacetime, is already a hero in my book. Not in Trump’s: “I like people who weren’t captured.”

So, let’s examine Walz’s record with the military next to Trump’s. Let’s compare President Joe Biden’s “mishandling” of classified documents with Trump’s. Let’s look at Hunter Biden’s improprieties in the light of Trump’s long history of scams, scandals and, now, actual convictions for falsifying business records.

Oh, and by the way: Trump really did try to overturn a legitimate American election. Most Americans know this. I suspect Trump does, too. Unforgivable.

So, no, thanks. I’ll take the chicken. I don’t mind if it’s a little undercooked.

I still prefer it to the excrement, even if the excrement includes a well-seasoned side dish of fava beans.

John Crisp is a columnist for Tribune News Service.