gastropoda

I’ll acknowledge being rather brutal toward the Lump in the Bed (as her husband christened her with less affection than he showed Panchito). But she did kill someone (who was it who said there are no accidents?) And she did sit by “smoking and reading” while her dry drunk drove the country into the ditch. But even she didn’t deserve the ugliness of the attacks on her successor, which all seem to have something to do with melanin. So I was glad to see Media Matters dig around to prove the ugliness has nothing to do with nutrition. Guess whose administration was pushing the very same “eat less & exercise” message. And of course it’s down the memory hole because, like everything the Texan Lady Macbeth was involved with, it was a fail. Processed crap gets crappier, kids get fatter. You can’t explain that.

Even I get weary of picking on Panchito, but he really should take that huge target off his posterior. Didn’t he help keep the Lump in the Bed’s fatal distraction off the national radar until the Chimp was duly installed? And at least he could be gracious enough to address the dissing her successor is taking from the KKKrazies. He is, after all, a guy with his own twisted relationship with pretzels.

I keep thinking doughnuts are an overlooked trend story, but then I’m so busy gobbling digital doughnuts I can’t even keep up with my own work. So I’ll just start by ReTweeting myself: This country needs an #OccupyPanchito. He gets paid megabucks to dribble drivel after selling the “ambler” who drove the country into the #OWS ditch. I’d suggest the foie gras treatment, but apparently that would not be painful. . .

All that said, half of me hopes some wingnut really does get elected, just to have his faux family subjected to the under-the-microscope treatment accorded the current occupants of the White House. Did an internet outlet really send someone out to food-stalk Mrs. O? And am I the only one a little queasy after eight years of booze-and-cigs unexamined under the former occupants? I guess we’re just lucky the intrepid “reporter” was not required to check the contents of the toilet bowls, too.

That said, every time I see the furor over the 1,700-calorie cheeseburger — the shit heard ’round the world — I just think: Dead boyfriend in the middle of the road. The Lump in the Bed was damned lucky with the media. Now they’re so desperate for traffic they’re throwing out the same red meat to the kkkrazies that was chewed over endlessly in 2009 and again in 2010. Imagine the “whitey tape” hysteria if Mrs. didn’t eat cheeseburgers.

Just back from Parma and Milan, I’m obviously having a slow time processing where I was and where I am. But I do know Panchito should be lambasted, not lauded, for his nonfood debut — he had his head so far up the Chimp’s ambling ass he apparently didn’t notice equal rights were being held back a decade along with everything else in this country (all chaps, no saddle?) And I do know it was nice to be among people demoralized about their own leader for a change (as the Economist put it, he screwed an entire country). For once, the only jokes I heard about the occupants of the White House were lame ones, about Mrs. O and her ortus. I guess they’d be happier if she were growing wars? Mowing down boyfriends?

I know we live in an up-is-down world, with a slothful glutton sermonizing on (fiscal) discipline in Jersey, but it was still astonishing to hear of the obese Capon attacking Mrs. O as overweight. I guess a voice of the people who lives on caviar and porterhouse would not know the difference between a short rib and “ribs.” But my favorite reaction from one of his useful idiots was: “Stay out of our cubbards!” Obviously, if they need no help with readin’ and writin’, they can eat smarter on their own

If any spouse thought long or hard about what he/she would have to put up with from the White House press corpse, only singles would ever get elected. Certainly the questions posed to Mrs. O by the creme de la overpaid creme at a “Let’s Move” lunch were cringe-inducers. What does $Palin think? Or, stupider, how dare you serve Super Bowl food on Super Bowl Sunday? No one ever asked the Lump in the Bed why the Chimp kept turning up bruised and battered while she blathered between cigs about reading. Some days I suspect what goes on in the Imperial Bedroom is not terrorist fist-bumping but good old American face-palming.

It’s only two years now, but I’m starting to suspect Mrs. O kinda likes fucking with the kkkrazies. After she’s been declared a nutrition nazi, she puts not one but two sausages on the Super Bowl menu, plus cheeseburgers and deep-dish pizza and stuffed potatoes and wings and ice cream etc. You’d almost think she was a real American.

Lost-in-translation of the week: One of the British papers dutifully reported on the made-for-denutted-media outburst by Wasilla’s own Taco Crunch Supreme but didn’t realize she wasn’t reaching for “some more ingredients” in trashing the regal Mrs. O. I guess I can’t blame the reporter and editors for not knowing what marshmallows, graham crackers and Hershey bars add up to. Whenever I read a hed using “pud” from their side of the Atlantic, I want to spell it out, too.

Thanks to Obamafoodorama, I see Mrs. O has decked the White House with boughs of cranberries and pomegranates and other edibles. I hope she’s ready for the shitstorm from the kkkrazies who’ll be upset she isn’t using Double Downs and Happy Meals and other real American food. Only traitors don’t need insulin.

Some other random thoughts: American cheese will have finally arrived when any story about a store specializing them does not refer to processed Kraft in the lede — it’s been a long time that no one has been wrapping Vermont Shepherd in plastic singles. And the dustup in DC over the ban on chocolate milk in schools makes it even more clear that Americans are enslaved by Big Food (does everything need raspberry-chocolate-ranch flavoring?), although I wonder if kids might like the white stuff better if it were whole and not skim or whatever watery crap they’re being served. And, cynical as I am, I actually felt proud to be an American when Mrs. O took the foreign dignitaries’ wives to lunch at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. I’ve only been once to eat, but the place feels like France. Now we have Freedom Food to show off in our own country. And Saint Alice was not involved.

I know the first black First Lady can’t pick a chocolate brown pepper without getting slimed by the knuckle-draggers for being an out-of-touch, overspending elitist, so it’s fascinating to realize the same press corpse that dutifully regurgitates the rabid foaming is so clueless, too, and not just at the Rupert Rag. Vacation or not, was this really the best time for a wine writer to be reporting back on an oh-so-fortuitous reservation at/expedition to one of the most expensive restaurants in the world? The big debate this week, after all, was whether a country drowning in debt from two wars could afford both food stamps and improved school lunches. Thank allah for Stephen Colbert’s mega-cojones in going before the House to talk about who’s picking our cheap lettuce and tomatoes, and why. To the “serious” “journalists,” and the lobbyist-owned Congresscritters, it was all a stunt. To the rest of America, it looks as if they all deserve some serious corn packing.

Just back from Buffalo, I’m pretty amazed at how quickly the poison of the wingnuts’ indictment of Mrs. O for vacationing in the land of “gazpacho soup” seeped into the water supply. In the local counterculture weekly, I spotted an ad for a restaurant that showed her face over a Marie Antoinette reference. Maybe it was meant to be so out-there it was in. Or maybe they forgot “let ’em eat organic carrots” is what’s elitist now.

Shrinks are obviously on vacation this month, because the craziness just keeps escalating. Some of the silliest was over Mrs. O’s trip to Spain (where, you know, they speak Mexican) and her daring to eat “gazpacho soup” with the king. I have one suggestion for anyone who worries too many tax dollars were wasted on security for her: Check out the tab for keeping Go Fuck Yourself undead. . .