Mike Lee's Baggage 

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Today is my fourth day of suffering from jetlag after visiting Greece (and then Amsterdam) for most of the month of September. While I was away, this space was more than capably filled by the likes of Christopher Smart, Michael Robinson and Jim Catano—three respected Utah opinionators, each of whom I owe a debt of thanks to for keeping this wobbly machine of a newspaper running on time.

No less so, thanks go to City Weekly editors Benjamin Wood and Jerre Wroble and Art Director Derek Carlisle, who were left scrambling each week when I'd feebly announce to them that I would not be able to write a long-distance column for a myriad of lame reasons.

For the 28 days I was away, I never turned on a television. It was like divorcing the spouse you hated in the first place. I'd long abandoned all of the hyperventilating cable news channels (Tip o' the hat to Gov. Cox for following my lead on that one), and for the past year or so, I tuned in to only cooking and food-challenge shows.

I don't think that's what Philo T. Farnsworth had in mind for the world when he invented the TV, but that's what he has wrought. Although I don't know who my local school-board reps are, there's no sweet and savory holiday-pie recipe I can't recite by heart.

It was with some trepidation that I did turn on the set for the very first time this past Saturday in order to become fully flummoxed by the University of Utah's Ute football team getting whipped by UCLA. Only 24 hours earlier, I was having a coffee in an Amsterdam coffee shop, fully taking in the wafts of marijuana smoke left behind by every patron inside and being very aware that my blood pressure was flat-out normal. Then the Utes played like they were the ones sucking in the sedative smoke, and my blood pressure spiked.

I thought watching BYU get smacked around by Notre Dame would be of some relief, but it wasn't. As much as I don't care for Cougar football, it's hard to miss that they can do what Utah cannot: Move the ball downfield in big chunks. Thus, when BYU made a game of it, my BP spiked once again.

The only relief I got was that somewhere in the broadcast, I was able to catch up on the Utah Senate race, thanks to another abomination of Farnsworth's invention—the TV commercial. I was therefore able to quickly measure the status of the current world-record holder in the category of "I'm bullshitting you and laughing all the way to the bank," our smarmy current Sen. Mike Lee, compared to his opponent, "I'm a real man and you're not," Evan McMullin.

If elections were won on commercials alone, it would be McMullin in a landslide. But alas, Utah still allows voting, and voting for a jerk Republican in Utah is still regarded as favorable to voting for an honorable person of any party.

Lee has earned every slap in the face that McMullin's team and supportive PAC messages are delivering to him—he has failed not only Utah but has failed each and every needy constituency there is, from moms to veterans. Lee has produced nothing of substance after 12 years in Washington, D.C., outside of comical soundbites and panic-stricken face memes.

Lee is the opposite of a virile man. Actual, real men stand by him not for his brilliance or prowess, but for the fact that standing next to Mike Lee makes even George McFly look like Superman. With no muscle behind his madness, then, Lee's commercials just play on the tried and true "vote for me because I'm a good Mormon" chorus.

His nuance this year, though, is to make sure it's Mormon women who are his public face. Evidenced by what appears to be a newly formed PAC of his own, Lee's ads are seemingly paid for by the "obscure local female mayors who don't mind that Mike Lee is a lame and weak scoundrel so long as it means we stay in good graces with the party!" coalition.

I will never understand why Utah women so un-begrudgingly stand by Utah "men" like Mike Lee. What am I missing? What exactly has Mike Lee done for the residents of South Jordan and Kaysville, the burghs represented by Lee's ad supporters, Dawn Ramsey and Tamara Tran? Nothing. Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson—a Democrat no less—supports the independent Evan McMullin while representing more people than both Ramsey and Tran combined.

I don't like for a second that McMullin has yet to give an adequate record to the Democrats who need to abandon their own party and vote for him in order to defeat Lee. I am going with Wilson on this one, however.

Wilson's dad, former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson, is a real man who didn't need to stand next to Mike Lee to prove it. Has Lee ever led a mountain rescue in the Grand Tetons? Nope, but Ted did.

Besides Ted (and anyone who ever dug coal, thinned beets or worked the track gangs in the Bingham Canyon copper mine), the last real Utah men that Utah produced were Butch Cassidy, Bus Hatch, Jim McMahon and the aforementioned Philo T. Farnsworth. The realest man supporting Mike Lee is Mike Pence. Let that sink in.

Now it's come to pass that Mr. Lee has women carrying his baggage. And baggage he has—more even than the baggage room at Charles-de-Gaulle airport, where my own luggage lingered for the first eight days I was in Greece. That's a lot of baggage.

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