Tastelessness and Classlessness Are the Least of Our Concerns

By Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer. Mr. Stephens is an Opinion columnist.

Bret Stephens: Frank, we have a lot of deadly serious topics to cover, including the president’s speech Wednesday night. Let’s start with something, uh, less momentous. Do you believe, as former South Dakota first gentleman Bryon Noem apparently does, that “breast is best?”

Frank Bruni: Because I worked for years as a restaurant critic, can I pretend you’re talking about chicken, and can I expound upon the transcendent virtues of the thigh?

Bret: Our colleague Shawn McCreesh has a beautifully reported story from Mr. Noem’s hometown, Castlewood, S.D., which canvases the views of his old neighbors and friends about the tabloid story regarding pictures of Mr. Noem, who, in photos published in The Daily Mail, appears to be wearing a pair of inflated balloons under a tight spandex shirt. Two points stand out for me. First, there’s a lot of sympathy for the Noems’ public embarrassment, which speaks highly of the place and its people. Second, that basic decency sits rather awkwardly with the moralistic hectoring that typifies the politics of so much of the Republican Party today.

Frank: Are you calling Republicans hypocrites? The thought never occurred to me.

Bret: I’m calling some Republicans hypocrites. Those of us who are either philosophical conservatives or classical liberals believe, with John Stuart Mill, in the virtue of “experiments in living” — and low taxes.

Frank: What makes the Noems’ situation so difficult to process and so much to process is that after the pictures’ release, Kristi Noem asked for some compassion, but she offered absolutely none of that in her wretched days as the secretary of Homeland Security. You rightly called out the “moralistic hectoring” of many Republicans, Bret, but her behavior went far beyond and far below that. She reveled in the vilification of Renee Good, of Alex Pretti, baselessly slandering them before their dead bodies were even cold; with a $50,000 gold Rolex on her wrist, she strutted in front of caged men in El Salvador, celebrating their consignment to a hellhole. Incapable of mercy (or, for that matter, decency), she now beseeches it.

Bret: My compassion is 100 percent with Bryon, 0 percent with Kristi: Cross-dressing is fine by me but shooting a 14-month-old dog because it couldn’t hunt — and then boasting about it in a political memoir — is psychotic and despicable, not to mention dumber than buckshot. Everything about her tenure as Homeland Security secretary could be gleaned from that incident.

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Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.  Instagram  Threads  @FrankBruni • Facebook

Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. Facebook

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