The celebrity author turned U.S. senator and now Republican vice-presidential nominee has issues with the veracity of his Democrat opponent. This is what you call irony.
J. D. Vance exists on the public stage because he is a storyteller. He was picked by Donald Trump to run for vice president because he is famous. He is famous because of his version of his own story — everyone has their own story — and it was made into a movie.
We’re supposed to take for granted that nowhere along the line did the Vance story get inflated. But he’s calling out Gov. Tim Walz, a respected public servant, as misrepresenting his military record.
Vance has spent a lot of time defending himself recently. He has learned that shooting off your mouth about “childless cat ladies” living miserable lives ricochets more than that rifle he holds in a public relations photo of him in a battle helmet. I guess we’re supposed to assume the photo is an accurate image of Vance’s military duty.
He seems to have trouble deciding what is true and what is convenient fiction.
Vance told the truth about Trump — said for the record that the former president is a fraud and cheat and lacks character. But now that he’s running as the convicted felon’s vice president, he did a rewrite.
I know a little about rewriting and editing. Like Vance, I enlisted in the military and became a photojournalist. I was in the Navy during the Vietnam War; Vance was in a U.S. Marine uniform in Iraq a generation later.
You can look up the duties of a Marine combat journalist. The job description is the same as for a Navy fleet photojournalist. So, we did essentially the same work, which is to be where the troops are, including in combat zones or in harm’s way, telling their stories for media outlets in military circles and news media back home.
That means everything from battle stations to ceremonial functions, promotions, public relations, newsletters, press releases and the kind of stuff that comes in handy when you’re running for political office.
Happy news, mostly. As my recruiter had promised, my duty would be mostly to help the government look good at the job of war-making.
I enlisted in the Navy because I didn’t want to carry a rifle in Vietnam. The joke was on me; the Navy gave me a camera and sent me to Vietnam, doing interviews and features on Navy men and women on ships in hostile zones and in the Gulf of Tonkin.
I rode every kind of ship — carriers, supply ships, destroyers, tugs and salvage ships. Rode bosuns’ chairs on high lines from one ship to another, helicopters, seaplanes, jets, got catapulted off a carrier.
But mostly, the vice-presidential nominee and I shared the experiences of making the brass look good and creating the stuff of newspaper clippings for proud parents in hometown America. I don’t know about Vance, but I learned the difference between the bull and the evidence left by the bull.
So I won’t quibble about the value of the military service of Walz. The Democratic vice-presidential nominee was in uniform as a reservist, and at any time over 24 years he was on call to go to war. I respect that.
Not all those who serve will be heroes; but everyone who wears the uniform and takes the oath gets respect. That’s valor earned and payable on demand, and I’d be the first to admit the people I wrote about had more claim to it than I did as a reporter.
I don’t even have a photo of myself holding my weapon — er, camera.
Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.