Delegating a more-eloquent-than-he's ever-been empty lectern to stand in for him, Herschel Walker unceremoniously skipped Sunday's debate with Raphael Warnock in their depressingly close race for a Senate seat in Georgia. We assume he was knackered from their belated, one-and-only debate Friday night, where the pastor of Atlanta's and MLK's Ebenezer Baptist Church spoke soberly of health care, student debt, insulin prices and the right to choose, and the former football player who attributes climate change to too many trees and China sending us their bad air accomplished the Herculean feat of stringing together several sort-of-whole sentences about open borders, Christian values and transgender athletes before vowing, "I'm gonna fix it." The surreal highlight, if you missed it: To prove he's tough on crime, Walker pulled out a super-duper-real, Deputy Dawg, Paw Patrol "badge" that instantly turned the event into an SNL skit; it also prompted the moderator to berate him for bringing "a prop," which is not allowed. Walker sputtered and protested that it was "real"; when the moderator persisted, he abjectly put it back in his pocket while still arguing, "I am work with many police officers."
The badge, of course, is the reason God and Al Gore invented the Internet, which discharged a flood of gleeful, brutal memes, many featuring Walker with his heroic badge alongside characters in The X Files, The Naked Gun, Beverly Hills Cop and other cinematic police officers. "What a great idea," exclaimed one fan. "Now everybody can pretend to be a cop - on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, they called it 'going to the Land of Make Believe.'" Another proposed Democrats wear Star Trek badges: "We'll tell the GOP we're from the future, and we all know what they did." Facing the onslaught, campaign spokespersons variously said the badge was given Walker "in recognition of community service work" he did with the Cobb County Sheriff's department," for "his dedication to law enforcement and commitment to public safety" in Johnson County, and he was standing too far away and couldn't see what the badge was. One online skeptic said the badge was given out "like candy" to people who made political contributions to the sheriff's department, another swore he'd found one just like it that morning in his Cap'n Crunch, and the National Sheriffs Association said an honorary badge is "for the trophy case" and why was this juvenile moron flashing it in a debate anyway?
But sticks and stones: The stalwart Walker stuck to his story in a Sunday interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker. "That is a legit badge," he insisted. "That's a badge I was given by a police officer and I carry it with me all the time. It's a real badge. It's not a fake badge." He also said he has badges "from all over Georgia," he does "a leadership program" and "health and wellness programs," has been "working in law enforcement for years," and "I've been - have my men and women in black - men and women in bluebacks since I've been doing this." "Everyone can make fun, but this badge give me the right - wait, let me finish," he said. "If anything happened in this county, I have the right to work with the police getting things done." When Welker asked if the badge gave him the power of arrest, he clarified it's an "honorary badge." "But they can call me whenever they want me," he added, "and I have the authority to do things for them to work with them all day." He also addressed the issue of the abortion he allegedly paid for, acknowledging it was his $700 check but "show where I have said this is an abortion," "that is the mother of my child," and "everyone's trying to trick me and make me respond." Or as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife noted to Andy Griffith, "Always when you plot someone dumber than yourself, you make them look smarter."
Given his soaring oratory, upstanding background, multiple charges of domestic abuse and false claims of being a cop, FBI agent, Cobb County sheriff, it's little wonder the GOP has now decided to make crime a key issue in the Georgia race. CNN's deadpan, so-called GOP strategist Alice Stewart announced the party led by a mobster has decided "they're going to double down on this issue and (Walker's) connection with law enforcement." "They're going to make up little badges and hand them out at the next campaign events," she said. "Because they want to show his record on fighting crime is much stronger than (Warnock's) experience and background with defunding the police." Umm, said the Internet to Walker's "record of fighting crime": "Oh, he has a record, just not one they're talking about," "He's committed more crimes than he's prevented," and "So, he's just like a cop." In 2001, he heard voices telling him to execute a guy who delivered a new car to him late; he told a girlfriend he'd "blow her head off"; he held a gun to his estranged wife's head, threatened a shoot-out with police, and was talked down by a "dubious" therapist who believes in demons. Never mind Warnock hasn't defunded any police and Senators don't really deal with crime, declared future constituents: We all want badges! "It must be true," said one. "On a related note, I've been an airline pilot since I was 3. I have the wings to prove it." We have no idea how we got here either.
