Steve Martin brought some laughter to 2020 when he posted a photo of his Halloween costume on Twitter. The actor uploaded a photo Wednesday with the caption: “My Halloween costume arrived!” The selfie was pretty inconspicuous and showed Martin in a blue collard shirt and glasses with one minor detail- a (hopefully fake) fly placed perfectly in his white hair.
The costume was an obvious parody at the recent vice presidential debate when a fly only known online as “Pence’s Fly” sat on the vice president‘s head. A Twitter account called “Pence’s Fly” responded to Martin’s tweet saying “Wait a second, it’s ME!” The account also reposted the photo and added, “Oh my god STEVE. I‘m such a big fan.”
The debates have been called many things and while people fought on Facebook and clutched their pearls at home the fly had another thing on their mind: fame. The fly stole the show and sat unnoticed for an unbelievable amount of time. According to a local reporter from California who timed it: Two minutes and three seconds to be exact. The fly broke the internet and was the only thing people could talk about on twitter.
According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult flash poll, 62 percent of debate watchers and non-watchers had either seen, read, or heard at least something about the fly landing on Pence’s head.
Celebrities, politicians, and voters from both parties couldn’t resist the punny jokes. Author King jumped in on his opportunity for the perfect pun and tweeted, “THE LORD OF THE FLIES, starring Mike Pence! Coming soon to a streaming platform near you.”
Pence told Fox News in an interview he heard about the fly afterward from his children. “They’re the ones that told me. I didn’t know he was there,” Pence explained. Even Pence couldn’t help but laugh at the situation and said, “They all told me, ‘Dad, you did OK,’” he said. “But they did tell me about the fly. And it was a good laugh for all of us.”
Democratic VP nominee Kamala Harris talked about the fly during a conversation with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. The TV host asked the senator if she could see the fly during the debate, and Harris responded, “I think that it’s important that we kind of find away, all of us, to move on.” She continued with a laugh, “And kind of fly away from this subject onto something else.”
