It's the little things that can really underscore a nation's greatness.
Even during a year in which the United States knocked over an insane despotism in the middle of the Middle East, bracketing Iran and putting airfields and planes about ten minutes from Syria, it is still the small things that make me gasp with admiration.
Even during a year when the whines and blather of an intensely hateful opposition of anklebiters and pseudo-intellectuals infesting mass media and the petrified forests of academe. predicted economic doom, and the society responded with unexpected growth, the sinew and strength of America is expressed in the minuscule.
Even during a time when a run-up to a Presidential election has been more entertaining than free popcorn and tickets to the debut of Snow White and the Eight Dwarfs down at the Bada-Bing, it is the lesser items of American life illuminate the greater truths.
Item from today's news:
Burger King Corp. is joining the low-carbohydrate parade by offering Bunless Whopper hamburgers and, soon, salads featuring steak, chicken and shrimp.Again, the American microcosm reveals the American macrocosm. Ponder that item for a mere moment. Meditate on the deeper truth that is revealed in the simple and mundane mantra, 'Bunless Whopper.'The Bunless sandwiches, which will be available nationwide beginning Tuesday, will come in plastic salad bowls, with knife and fork.
--- Burger King to Market Bunless Whoppers
And what is that truth? It is as clear as a $4 bottle of spring water. What the birth of the 'Bunless Whopper' tells us without question is that the United States of America has at last achieved the most ancient dream, not only of humanity, but of life itself.
Yes, America has finally arrived at the alpha and omega point of life on earth. Today we stand at the top of the long, hard and deadly climb from the primeval soup. Today the free world, the first world, the Crown of Creation and cradle of democracy is home at last with the Bunless Whopper; each one served 'in plastic salad bowls, with knife and fork.'
We have in America, right now, what all other cultures and nations and empires have dreamed of since before the dawn of time. We have, finally, created a society that produces
In fact, we are now so firmly established in the way-too-much-food universe that we are about to pass through a chronosynclasticinfandibulem into the alternate universe where a kid at the cash register says, 'Would you like to downsize these fries?'
I know, I know, They will tell you that people in America go to bed hungry every night. And They will be right. They will tell you, because They live to tell you, that you must think of "the starving children of Appalachia" (urban or rural), and so you will because you always think about what They so compulsively must tell you.
But, at the same time, the same 'They' are also going to tell you that you, or others like you, or others that you may know, or may see on the street (but seldom at a bikini contest on the beach) are much too fat. They will tell you that people, especially 'the children,' ('They' love to drag in 'the children' at every opportunity.) are getting too obese, and by God the government needs to step in and 'do something.' This 'something' will invariably be a host of new regulations written by Them and directed at large corporations to tell people more about the fact that 'way-too-much-food will make you way-to0-much-fat.' A message that really hasn't been sufficiently promulgated by the nation's book, magazine, newspaper, radio, and dietary supplement companies.
After the new regulations 'telling people what is good for them' have zero effect at halting way-too-much-food intake, They will make their next move. They will, 'for your own good,' make some laws to limit 'way-too-much-food.'
Following rapidly on the heels of these new laws that They will make 'for your own good,' will come a raft of studies, convocations, symposiums, and finally the really big gun, the class-action law suits directed at the deepest pockets around.
Bribed experts from academe will blather at $500 and hour plus expenses in hundreds of courtrooms. Morbidly obese victims without number will waddle in front of morbidly clueless juries without peer in an effort to suck morbidly huge settlements from the coffers of companies who have produced way-too-much-food for decades. Judges busy digesting way-too-much-lunch will drowse on their benches for months and years at a time. Discovery motions will uncover mountain ranges of documentation going back decades that prove, PROVE, that McDonalds' executives knew the Big Mac has six grams too much secret sauce for the heart of average American who wants to hoover up ten meals a day and live to 120. They will be found guilty of a conspiracy to feed people way-too-much food for way-too-little money. (The top restaurants that charge $20 a bite in Los Angles, New York, and DC will get a pass so that power lunching may continue.)
And when it is all said and done and run up to the Supreme Court, and the checks are cut, the only Americans who will then be getting far-too-fat will be the members of the Trial Lawyers Association, the tools of Expert Academe who have shilled for them,and the politician with his hand out "lookin' for a new friend."
Way-too-much-food will have been judged to be, in the final analysis, un-American for poor people and little children. It's the American Way.
Posted by Vanderleun at March 30, 2005 9:34 PM | TrackBack