If Kristi Noem Can Correct her Memoir, than, Dammit, I Can Too!

Daylin Leach
4 min readMay 8, 2024

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Many people say that everyone should write a memoir at some point in their lives. I’m not sure that Kristie Noem’s political advisors are currently among those people.

As we’ve all heard, South Dakota Governor and VEEP hopeful Noem’s views on animal discipline seem to have been lifted directly from Attila the Hun’s best selling pop-up book, “Thoughts on Slaughtering: Most of Europe, and your Pets, Volume 2”. She proudly dispatched her puppy Cricket to hell (apparently, he was not “saved”) in a gravel pit for being more enthusiastic about chasing chickens than pheasants. This has caused the good Governor’s popularity to dip below IRS audits and nostril polyps.

But confessions of petacide (which would be the title of the worst romance novel ever) aren’t the only problem with Kristie’s treatise. She also talks in some detail about her meeting with North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jung-Un. The story of how she stared down the dictator really showed her metal and her grasp of complicated international affairs. It would be even more impressive if it had ever happened.

Apparently, the whole story was fabricated. But Noem won’t just admit that. First she says that when the “error” in her book was “brought to her attention” she corrected it immediately. It seems that the error was NOT brought to her attention when she read the erroneous words, out loud, on videotape, while recording her audiobook.

Even now, she won’t fully admit that the meeting didn’t happen. She just says she won’t talk about meetings with foreign leaders she had, or…well…did not have. Thus, we’ll never really know if the Governor ever met with Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the president of Turkmenistan, and whether or not they kissed. Because Kristi Noem does not kiss and tell, especially the man she calls “Gurbang-a-poo”, if, that is, she ever met him.

So now, Governor Noem is on a full-blown explanation tour. This is ironic. Her memoir is called “Never Go Back”, but she is now going back over and over again to explain what the actual F she was talking about in much of the book. I didn’t know that explaining, denying, alterning, revamping and cleaning up your memoir was a thing, given that it is YOUR OWN FRIGGIN LIFE STORY! You really should have that nailed down when you publish a book about it.

That said, This has caused me to reflect on my own memoir. “Daylin. Yeah. Uh-Huh!”, which I wrote during a particularly intense bout of hallucinations involving leprechauns and overdue credit cards, which actually turned out not to be hallucinations. If Kristi Noem can go back and make…let’s call them revisions, to her life story, then surely I can do the same. So, in the interests of retroactive full-disclosure, I’d issue the following corrections:

+ Upon reconsideration, I am prepared to say that the number of Nobel Peace prizes I have won is not technically “A shit ton”. Although I am not at liberty to say precisely how many I may have won, or not won, mostly for… “my work in the east”.

+ In 2020, Joe Biden didn’t formally offer me $4,000 and a bucket of herring to be his Vice President. It was more of an understanding. My understanding. And mine alone.

+ Did I really play bass for The Clash? Who’s to say? Other than the Clash. They could probably say. Don’t talk to them.

+ Ok. So, I may not have “invented” the spoon. But I certainly was instrumental in it’s cultural acceptance

+ It is true that I wiped out a whole colony of sea monkeys as a kid. But they were really mean sea monkeys. Thoughtless, anti-social and truly terrible pheasant hunters.

+ Now that I think harder about it, I now remember that my nickname in college was not “Danger Hunk”. It was “Hubert the Doofus”. I’m sure you see how I could have mixed up the two.

+ It turns out that I was not voted my high school’s “Sexiest Man in Geometry Class . That wasn’t even a category. But do you know what was? “Most Likely to Have Neighbors that Move Urgently”. And see if you can guess who won that!

+ To be clear, once and for all, I am NOT a member of the royal family. I am not the Earl of Oxnard, The Twicket of Peppermint, the Viceroy of The South or Grand Dame Arabella of Sussex de la Contedella du Bouchamps. I apologize for any confusion my lenghty chapters about my boyhood at Balmoral may have caused.

+ I can’t walk on water. I can’t even really walk on land. I can however walk on pudding. At least, I think it’s possible.

I hope this clears up any misapprehensions my plain, unambigious words may have caused. Maybe someday Kristi and I will meet! Perhaps then we can write a chapter on what it was like raising our scamp of a son Novak Djokovic. Oh dammit! I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

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Daylin Leach

Long-time state House and Senate member, author of PA’s Medical Marijuana law, also creator of “shit-gibbon!” Comedian, professor, father of 2 awesome children!