The fly lands, and the comments and memes begin
You knew as soon as it landed that the world would speak of little else. It no longer mattered what Vice President Pence had to say. What mattered was The Fly.
In the second half of Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate, a fly put its wheels down right on the former Indiana governor’s head. Could there be anything more distracting -- or humiliating -than a fly photobombing one of your life’s most consequential moments?
Off the record, the fly admitted to this columnist that he initially was heading for Sen. Kamala Harris’ sleeker, more-inviting coif but decided against it because, he said with a slight tremor in his voice, “She was speaking.”
Instead, the fly glided over to the snowy mound of the vicepresident’s well-tended topiary, where it remained formore than two minutes, according to people who record such things.
It didn’t take long for pundits and political operatives to begin speculating about the fly’s motives or other possible forces at work. One viral suggestion featured a photo of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the caption, “I sent the fly.”
On “CBS This Morning” Thursday, co-anchor Gayle King hinted at a possible cosmic dimension to the fly’s appearance.
“At one point when they were talking about systematic racism, I think this is interesting timing that a fly would land onMike Pence’s head at that particular time when he said that there really wasn’t systemic racism,” King said.
Adding to the significance of the fly, she said: “It was a fly of color, too, that came at a very opportune time ...”
Yes, I see. A fly of color landing on a whiteman’s head when he’s denying systemic racism. On a Wednesday. In Salt Lake City.
We’re familiar with angels entering the mortal realm as emissaries of the Almighty. But who knew God employs house flies to interfere with presidential elections?
A Washington Post story paraphrases art historian Celeste Brusati as saying: “Throughout the history of western painting, imagery of flies can symbolize death, rot, decay, corruption and ‘painting’s power to deceive the eye.’”
There is, perhaps, another explanation: We’ve all gone insane.
King, who said that she’d never seen anything like it before, apparently hasn’t been paying close attention. Flies can’t seem to stay away from politicians and are demonstrably nondiscriminating.
Hillary Clinton was visited by a fly during a 2016 debate -- and not on her hair. That particular fly landed right on her forehead. As ever unflappable, the former secretary of state didn’t blink, and the flymoved on.
Mike Bloomberg’s face also caught a fly’s eyes while speaking at the Democratic National Convention in August. And, yes, even Donald Trump’s comb-over once provided a rest area for a passing fly. The most-famous chapter in the fly diaries, however, involved President Barack Obama, who was the target of one very foolish fly. Obama’s hand-eye coordination is the stuff of legend, but his talents aren’t limited to the basketball court. He can swat with equal dexterity, as the fly that landed on his armduring a CNBC interview in 2009 learned, fatally.
Thus, the most we can infer fromthe week’s events is that flies do not share our obsession with identity politics, nor do they ascribe deeper meanings to nonsense. The fly lands where the fly lands. Indeed, they do like death and rot, but they just love hot faces beading with sweat and makeup and hair sugar-coated with hairspray.
It would seem the word is out that politics is a fly’s buffet.