Bad enough the Brits wined and dined the Chimp as if he were human and not a war criminal. But now they’ve gone and denied sweet old Martha Stewart a visa (never mind that she did her time, unlike so many Scooters). And that could make it awkward if the Mrs. Chimp Wannabe ever needs an audience with the Queen. After all, she steals not only recipes but drugs and husbands, too.
I forget whose original thought I’m stealing here, but the great food shortage is really less about quantity and more about greed — there’s plenty to eat if you can afford to pay whatever the extortionists ask. Already it’s becoming clear that the capitalist fools are going to take every advantage of a bad season for the poor, and nowhere was that reality starker than in the Guardian story on Britain’s plans to go back to feeding cheap pork byproducts to chickens, a disgusting practice that was stopped once scientists started connecting the dots between unnatural-food-in and mad-cow-disease-out. I stay as far away from chicken as I can, having been raised with them in the backyard in Arizona, where their filthy habits were impossible to ignore. But I wonder at a world that still believes nature is going to roll over and do whatever avarice wants. Which is why I read the WSJ story on protests in South Korea against American beef with special fascination. Consumers there are informed enough to know our suspect supply is potentially tainting even things like sanitary napkins. No details were provided, but I don’t even want know how they put the cow in the Kotex. And would that lead to Mad Cindy Disease?
Maybe it’s because I’m not an $8 million-a-year talking head, but I can’t wait for an elitist to take back the White House kitchen. It was bad enough that the Chimp served hot dogs to Father Time; those are what that old fart feeds his friends from the press plane. But to offer Gordon Brown a hamburger? No wonder the Pope passed on dinner.
As for the purloined recipe kerfuffle, it looks to have been good for all concerned. With luck, voters will no longer have to be force-fed bullshit cookies now that a chef who would know has pulled back the curtain on the big lie that any amateur cooks once she gets staff. And the Bud heiress was able to distract attention away from that little junkie episode when she stole drugs from her own charity. If there’s any outrage to be had, it’s why a mega-fortune from ketchup was sold as being somehow effetely un-American but one derived from beer makes the beneficiary jes’ folks. I’m sure a consultant could make up a good answer with arugula and granola and get it played big. . . .
Higher up the print chain, all you need to know about why we have a good ol’ fuckup in the White House was on full display in an NYT blog post by a “reporter” on the trail with the Big O in Pennsylvania who was shocked, shocked to encounter that local oddity cheese fries — something sold less than a block from his workplace the last time I worked there, at the Nathan’s straight out of Coney Island. Candidates are expected to be totally in touch with every level of this very complex society. “Journalists” with six-figure incomes, 401Ks and stock plans can afford to be appalled by what the other nine-tenths eat. No wonder the Budweiser heir-by-marriage fed them Costco barbecue — he knew they would roll over and wet themselves.
The only thing more appalling than seeing the war president prance around as if he had finally found his organ grinder was hearing what he ate for lunch afterward. Hot dogs. On White House china. Worse, the war president wannabe agreed to have whatever the First Child was having. He is McLame.
Just like the outgoing unevolved Chimp, though, the incoming Father Time knows how to massage the hell out of the pack media on the campaign trail. Just by treating reporters to a barbecue at his log mansion very near where I grew up (not Sedona) he got no end of Tiger Beat-worthy coverage. They even ran his rib recipe, for Costco’s sake (nothing but the best for “my friends”). For once I’m glad Panchito is safely confined to the chewing-and-typing beat. Imagine the damage he could inflict with a manly man in an apron rather than a cowboy hat doing the jive-talking. America would be convinced this is not the Gordon Ramsay of candidates but the guy to have a comforting plate of macaroni and cheese with.