What our fascination with Mitt Romney?s dog Seamus says about our culture - Boston.com
Sometime during a 12-hour drive from Boston to Canada in 1983, Mitts oldest son, Tagg, noticed a brown liquid running down the rear window of the family station wagon. Realizing the liquid was being discharged by their dog, Mitt pulled off the highway and into a gas station, borrowed a hose to wash down Seamus and the car, and then returned the dog to his rooftop carrier for the duration of the trip. Most media reports have accurately relayed those basics. However, exaggerations and faulty assumptions have been advanced, most notably by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who has trotted out the ghost of poor Seamus in more than 30 of her pieces since 2007.
To me, Romneys critics have focused on the wrong part of the anecdote. Its not that Romney put his dog on the roof. Remember how different standards were in 1983. Back then, I was a kid sloshing around in the cargo section of my familys station wagon, competing with my equally unbuckled younger sister to see how many passing truck drivers we could get to pull their horns.
Ill take the Romneys at their word that Seamus loved his alfresco rides. Hell, my dog loves doing all kinds of things I dont, chief among them luxuriating in the stink of other dogs duffs.
What is beyond debate, though, is that this far into this particular trip, Seamus had ceased enjoying his ride. Faced with such irrefutable evidence, most people, I suspect, would have relented and let the ailing dog cram into the back of the wagon, even if logic dictated that cleaning up a repeat episode of his gastric distress would be a whole lot messier than if he were returned to the roof.