The Great American News Script

Amateur ad-makers, be advised: According to the June 27 installment of the Boston Globe's "Making of Mitt Romney" profile series, in 1983, before beginning the family's annual 12-hour drive from Boston to Ontario in their wood-paneled station wagon, a 36-year old Romney "put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack."

Hours into the surely thrilling excursion, eldest son/primordial spawn Tagg spots something alarming:

A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Man, doesn't that journalistic tour de force of an opener just make you want to go off and become a profile writer? Yeah, me neither.

Soon after the piece runs, ex-Wonkette Ana Marie Cox quotes PETA president Ingrid Newkirk calling the incident "a lesson in cruelty," and that "it is commonsense that any dog who's under extreme stress might show that stress by losing control of his bowels: that alone should have been sufficient indication that the dog was, basically, being tortured." Which, Cox reminds us, Romney supports with gusto for suspected terrorist humans.

Newkirk is them quoted by the Boston Herald saying that while PETA doesn't take positions on candidates, Romney may have "what neurologists call an 'absence of the mirror neuron,' a physiological condition in the brain which means they cannot feel basic compassion."

And just as She Who Is Not To Be Named on the far right only becomes relevant when John Edwards starts responding and fundraising, Romney has to turn around and give a press conference Thursday saying Seamus "enjoyed it" and that, I quote, "PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air."

Yeah, liberal media, it's not torture if the so-called victim likes it.

Full disclosure: Romney and his psychotic-Ken-doll brood creep the unholy hell out of me. But don't take it from me -- take it from Tagg, quoted on the New York Times' "Caucus" blog June 19, on how his father is running for president because, basically, he's just too perfect not to:

"I don't think you have a choice. I think you have to run. Look at the way your life has unfolded, and you're gifted, you're smart, you're intelligent, but you've also been extraordinarily lucky, and so many things have broken your way, that you couldn't have predicted or controlled. It would have been a shame not to at least try, and if you don't win, we'll still love you."

Now that's just plain inspiring. And something to motivate those of us trudging along the proverbial roadside as the Romneys of the world zip past in their silver Zephyrs... with incontinent Irish setters strapped on top.

Let the mighty eagle soar indeed.