Kristi Noem
“Just say Noem!”
Kristi Lynn Noem (/noʊm/; née Arnold; born November 30, 1971) is the Republican Governor of the U.S. state of South Dakota, and was an up-and-coming favorite for Vice President for the 2024 campaign until disclosing that she shoots cute puppies.
Early life[edit]
Noem was born on the farm, as she will never let her campaign audiences forget, in Watertown, S.D. to parents of Norwegian ancestry. Noem's political career began in 1990 as she was elected to the important statewide post of South Dakota Snow Queen. She got college credits at the allegedly real Northern State University, Mount Marty College, and Fred's Institute of Technology, but had to curtail her studies to return to the farm and add a hunting lodge, interpretive museum, and signs claiming you'd be able to see Mount Rushmore right over there if the trees had not grown up.
Political career[edit]
In 2006, Noem was elected to the South Dakota House, and in 2010, she became 100% of the South Dakota delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2012, she achieved a personal best, attaining an actual majority of the vote rather than backing in after many voters wrote in "None of the above" or "What's Congress?"
While in Congress, Noem took online courses from the University of South Dakota and finally completed her education. She claimed college credit for being in Congress, a delightfully non-monetary form of double-dipping that doesn't even have to be reported on her financial disclosures.
In 2018, she became Governor of South Dakota, immediately becoming newsworthy as the first woman to hold the office. She prided herself on "cutting through red tape" whenever crucial problems arose, such as
- A (former) bureaucrat denying her daughter a real-estate license
- Her (former) attorney general cooperating with the legislature on investigating her.
[edit]
In 2020, when the Coronavirus pandemic struck, Noem dabbled in shutting schools and directing citizens to "shelter in place" until government finished tracking down and destroying all the remaining viruses. However, eventually Noem reversed course and, along with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, advocated letting the outbreak run its course. That got her a national speech at the 2020 Republican Nominating Convention, where President Donald Trump was about to finish running his course.
Girls' sports[edit]
In 2021, South Dakota advanced the Women's Fairness in Sports Bill, preventing mediocre male athletes from putting on falsies and mascara and dominating the girls' teams. Noem announced she would sign the bill. However, the NCAA declared it would boycott South Dakota, forcing girls to play with themselves, and businessmen said they would lose a lot of cash because no one wants to watch that. South Dakota lets the Governor add "style and form" changes to a legislative bill, and Noem used this power to add to the restriction on schools, "if they feel like it." The legislature balked at the change and the bill died, just as Republicans nationwide were beginning to look at Noem as a way to not have to nominate Trump again.
2024 Presidential campaign[edit]
Noem did not run for President in 2024, avoiding the fate of solid Governors like DeSantis who threw themselves against Trump and splattered. However, she did tease about her willingness to serve as Vice President, jumping into a small pool that included Governor Doug Sorghum of neighboring North Dakota.
All Noem had to do to prevail was prove her Republican bona fides by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. She did so with a campaign autobiography, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Cricket. Cricket was the family's rambunctious 14-month-old wirehaired pointer who refused to act grown-up and help hunt pheasants. On the way home, Cricket decided McDonald's was getting too pricey and free-lanced to get some Chicken McNuggets at a nearby farm. After being restrained and showing signs of craving Governor McNuggets for dessert, Noem triumphantly dragged Cricket to a gravel pit for two in the hat, more proof of Noem's gritty penchant for making painful decisions. Noem executed the family goat as well, mostly for being smelly. Cricket's behavioral problems were solved, as was Trump's VP dilemma.
In popular culture[edit]
The Cricket episode broke Noem's dominance over the dog community and enshrined her as America's most loathsome conservative, surely not outdoing Trump, but much worse than —
- Putting Rover atop the Range Rover for the 700-mile Boston-to-Detroit run (Mitt Romney),
- Abusing the family pet until it bites everyone in the Secret Service (Joe Biden), or
- Savoring Curried Dog in Indonesia (Barack Obama).
A nationwide talk radio tour to promote What's Wrong with Cricket served as a victory lap for her to continue saying she both hated and loved slaughtering the rambunctious terrier but never regretted it. This ensured she could win election forever in South Dakota but never outside it, in a nation that watches a schoolyard gun massacre and says, There was a puppy? Is he all right?
During the book tour, Noem also found time to get complete facial reconstruction for past damage from kissing up to business interests, and to cut a series of advertisements for Texas Smiles, though less-traveled South Dakotans believe that there may be a couple cosmetic dentists back in Rapid City whom the Governor could have boosted.
What's Wrong with Cricket became a best-seller, but mostly among readers who always wanted a definitive critique of the British sport. Barnes & Noble helps readers find the book by stocking it alongside Clarence Thomas in Grievance Studies.
Further reading[edit]
The reader — especially the canine reader — who wishes to revel in Noem's loathsomeness can consult Wikipedia, where her unfitness to serve is laid out in chronological order.
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