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.