Tensions Low At Fake 'Ham House' Feud Between Romney, Gingrich

 
 Trouble was unfortunately not at all apparent early Saturday at a non-chain breakfast diner where national media could pick up some "local color" on a day when followers of political news are interested in reading new developments, but there are no new developments. Polls will not close until 7 p.m. Eastern time. What to do with the press corps during the boring lull when the southern state's fringe-right Republican primary voters actually drive their GMC maxi-trucks four miles through the white exurbs looking for their polling place in a school builidng they've otherwise forgotten existed because they are all 75 years old and have probably already buried most of their own children, who succumbed to ham-biscuit diabetes? How about a manufactured "showdown at the local ham eatery," maybe?

The AP reporter filed this forlorn thing:  

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — So just where was the beef?

It turns out that the great ham house standoff had no sizzle, no matter how you sliced it.

GOP presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were expected to cross paths at a campaign stop in Greenville as they rallied voters on primary day. But the much-hyped Republican run-in failed to materialize after Romney showed up at Tommy's Ham House earlier than originally planned.

We don't want to bemean, because Allah knows following state political races is a mind-numbing exercise in slow-motion masochism, but the reporter who wrote this is probably about 30 years old (we checked her LinkedIn profile). So, her single-sentence "fun feature" lede -- which is not about ham, but "beef," which is actually made from slaughtered cows and not slaughtered hogs -- references the wooden, scripted debate moment in 1984 when dullard Walter Mondale recited the catchphrase from a then-current hamburger chain's advertisement in reply to a question about his Democratic primary opponent, Gary Hart. This reporter would've probably been teething, at this point in American History.

And what on Earth does this have to do with a breakfast diner named "Tommy's Ham House" in South Carolina, today? Nothing. It was another weird American Journalist reference to an unremembered past, because that's how reporters "on the campaign trail" did it in the 1970s.

It's not even the about the same kind of dead animal meat product.

Anyway, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich did not go to the non-chain diner for a folksy South Carolina confederate photo op at the same time. And America was denied another scripted moment of bogus lie-crammed argument between the Mormon kleptocrat and the amoral giant baby kleptocrat whowisheshe was a Mormon, so he could have all those open marriages with fifteen wives and the hippies and the free love sex.

In other words, we'll be back this evening with coverage of the South Carolina GOP primary results! Maybe Newt will blow a gasket and explode right on the teevee! [ AP ]