Blazing Britches

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 1360

Matt Bevin has spent nearly four years torturing the truth. 

Remember Blazing Saddles? Blazing Britches would be the perfect title for a Matt Bevin (or Donald Trump) biopic.

How about reprising "Liar, Liar" for the Bevin (Trump) movie's theme song? The 1965 single was the one and only hit by the "The Castaways." (Mary Ann, Ginger and Lovey famously lip-synched and danced to it on Gilligan's Island.)  

The song would need new words. But I'd leave in the start: "Liar, liar, pants on fire/ Your nose is longer than a telephone wire." 

At least the governor and the president are consistent. They started dissembling on the campaign trail and they've been at it ever since. One of Bevin's biggest and earliest whoppers caught the attention of one of my favorite TV satirists, John Oliver. Click here.  

"The unanswerable mystery is whether Trump is consciously lying or whether he believes his own drivel," Max Boot mused in the Washington Post last summer. "The latter possibility is more terrifying, yet the former is scant comfort, either. Best-case scenario: The president is a pathological liar who repeatedly utters falsehoods that no one who does not work at Fox News could possibly believe. Worst case: He is a fantasist who cannot tell lies from truths, fantasy from reality."

Replace "Trump" with "Bevin," and the paragraph also works.

Bevin's only a governor of a small state, which maybe makes him a double-A ball fraudster. The big leaguer is coming to Lexington Monday to stump for Bevin. Bevin dotes on The Donald, who's all in for Bevin. 

"As President Trump approaches his 1,000th day in office...he has significantly stepped up his pace of spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods," wrote Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly in the Washington Post the other day. (Ditto for Bevin as election day draws nigh.) 

"As of Oct. 9, his 993rd day in office, he had made 13,435 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of almost 22 claims a day since our last update 65 days ago."

I don't know of any Bluegrass State reporters who are keeping a running tally on Bevin's deceit and deception. But I'd love to have the trouser concession at his favorite men's store--Trump's, too.

They'd save money on burned up britches by shopping at a place that sells fireproof suits for race car drivers. "May I show you something nice in Nomex?" Of course, Trump and Bevin would just need the pants.