Of Canoes and Caesars: J.D. Vance’s Imperial Birthday Float
The pampered prince of political prostitution enjoys the spoils of betraying everything he ever said he believed
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By David Shuster
We are now a nation governed not by leaders, but by increasingly cartoonish simulations animated more by vanity than virtue, more by stagecraft than statecraft. And there is no better mascot for this decline and rot than Vice President J.D. Vance, the Appalachian Horatio Alger turned Beltway embarrassment.
In his latest escapade, Vance demanded river waters rise in homage to his kayak.
Yes, the Vice President—whom the Almighty (clearly in jest) saw fit to give both ambition and a memoir—marked his 41st birthday not with reflection or restraint, but with an aquatic pageant worthy of Nero.
On August 2nd, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that obedient regiment of hydraulic butlers, received a curious request: lower the dam at the aptly named Caeser Creek Lake, raise the flow of the Little Miami River, and ensure the Vice President and his Secret Service flotilla could glide through southwestern Ohio without so much as a puddle to inconvenience them.
Officially, the request was for the safe navigation of Vance’s security detail. But multiple sources in and out of government report the whole charade was to make the river nice and deep for Vance’s little birthday paddle. One authority said that deepening the river provided Vance with “ideal kayaking conditions.”
The locals, of course, were never consulted. Residents along the lake saw the water vanish from their docks; folks along the Little Miami River were never asked whether their weekend fishing trip should be sacrificed for His Excellency’s joyride.
All of it, naturally, was paid for by the American taxpayer, that perennial chump who gets to fund the gluttony of the powerful while being scolded for needing food stamps.
Clearly it is not enough that we pay for the Vice President’s motorcade, his security detail, his gourmet lunches, his speechwriters, and his self-mythologizing PR team. Now we must rearrange the landscape itself— including lowering lakes and filling rivers so Vance can cosplay for a few hours as Huck Finn.
One might expect such a stunt in a Third World banana republic. Or perhaps in an oil drenched monarchy led by a Prince with a strong attachment to personal aqueducts.
But this is in the United States of America.
And we have a Vice President treating a public river like it’s his own personal bathtub. This is not leadership. This is not even politics. This is sheer, unvarnished narcissism.
What makes the whole incident even more nauseating is Vance’s history. He has claimed to be the voice of the forgotten American, the bard of the Rust Belt, the memoirist of misery.
“Hillbilly Elegy,” he called it—a book filled with melodrama and meager insight, wherein Vance explained that the working class suffers not from economic abandonment, but from personal failure and bad morals. The elites, Vance wrote, are smug and out of touch.
And now here is Vance, quite literally redirecting rivers for his own amusement.
Ethics watchdogs in both parties are aghast. One former Bush administration official described Vance’s river stunt as “hypocritical and outrageous.” An Obama-era counsel said no previous administration would “have ever permitted this.”
In true Roman fashion, Vance's office denies all wrongdoing. “Standard coordination,” they say. “Nothing out of the ordinary.” Of course not.
It is now standard procedure for federal agencies to adjust topography at the whims of elected narcissists. It is standard for public assets to serve private indulgence. It is standard to humiliate the republic for the sake of optics. All of it is standard.
That’s the problem.
Our country has endured horrific men before who were a heartbeat away from the Presidency. But rarely has the United States been forced to endure a VP combination as putrid as J.D. Vance’s self-pity, self-regard, and self-service—all wrapped in a soggy birthday kayak. As our video makes crystal clear:
If there were any justice, the Little Miami River would have risen up not in homage, but in protest, flipping over Vance’s kayak and depositing J.D. into the water and mud.
That is where bottom feeders like him belong.
Whether on a river or in the halls of power, J.D. Vance is dirty, slimy, and self-absorbed.
David Shuster is an Emmy award winning broadcast journalist who is best known for his work at NBC News and as an anchor MSNBC. He is a contributor to Blue Amp Substack and co-host of our weekly show (Thursdays, 2pm et, on Substack), “Amped Up w/ Cliff Schecter.”
My parents were from the southern Appalachians, and the word “hillbilly” was not permitted in my house growing up. My brother read the book so the rest of us wouldn’t have to, and he said it was full of outsider stereotypes.
I’m quite certain that the Heritage Foundation is going to find a reason for Trump to have to leave the presidency after 2 years - Vance actually believes in their, um, dirt - but I’m not sure he can match the unique con artist personality that charms the Republican base with one lie after another. At least, I hope not.
The only comparable trash behavior was during the government shutdown of 2017, and then-Governor Chris Christie of NJ took his family to a public beach that he had shut down to the public. Looking like a beached whale on his flimsy beach chair, he lolled in the sun while his children played in the sand and surf. Noblesse oblige? Hardly. Obese observed.