“Now listen, if you won’t do it for me, if you won’t do it for your family, you got to get vaccinated for Babydog,” Gov. Jim Justice declared in one of the most cringeworthy videos of all time. “That’s all there is to it. Now she wants you vaccinated so badly, and she’s going to be the one to lead us through on all these incentives. And without any question she’d give you a high-five right now, but you have got to get yourself vaccinated.”
Not since Richard Nixon and the infamous Checkers speech has an American politician managed to make such a fool of himself by exploiting a pet to divert attention from incompetence and other unflattering issues. It was a richness of embarrassment.
After watching that video with his dog, exhorting us – for the dog’s sake – to get a vaccine to protect us against a virus with a negligible mortality rate, more than a few West Virginians had second thoughts about the fitness of Justice to be our governor, or anything else.
If they had it to do over again, they probably wouldn’t vote for him, and they certainly wouldn’t lend him money.
If the folks at Greensill Capital had seen the Babydog video several years ago, they surely would have known better than to lend $700 million to such a man and his various speculative enterprises. “What’s your collateral?” they might have had the sense to ask. “That slobbering old bulldog?”
Get this: The great blame-shifter is suing the now-defunct Greensill and other financial institutions for tricking him into accepting their largesse. Apparently, it was their fault that he made a mess of things.
It makes as much sense as getting vaccinated for the sake of a dog.
How ever it shakes out, we all now have a better sense of Justice. Don’t lend money to this guy. Do not vote him into office. If you can’t disavow him for his own sake or for the sake of your family, do it for Babydog.
