Never understood the fixation on primary colors and so forth in and around children’s hospitals. We’re putting you in this giant, intermittently noisy machine with a cage enclosing your head; please focus on these colors, which adults apparently interpret as whimsical, and not your impending existential doom. As always, thanks for being scanned by Pepsi™ presents CAT scans [menacing clown laugh].
Apparently IOKIYAR extends to food choices:
Mitt Romney has a complicated relationship with fast food. He likes pizza, but insists on scraping off the cheese before he ever takes a bite. He likes fried chicken, but only when the skin has been removed. He likes Big Macs, but only after removing the middle bun. He likes Coca Cola because, he explained in his 2004, book Turnaround, it reminds him of polar bears, but he rarely drinks it because he can’t have caffeine. On the trail, Romney has name-dropped Carl’s Jr. and spoken of the wonders of WaWa, but subsists mainly on granola he carries around in one-gallon ziplock bags.
Yes, I understand this is all in service of a broader piece on Mitt’s relationship to Big Food. But, let’s just pause to compare this treatment to that of Candidate Obama in matters gustatory:
SHUSTER: Well, here’s the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, “I’ll have orange juice.”
MATTHEWS: No.
SHUSTER: He did. And it’s just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, “Here, have some coffee,” you say, “Yes, thank you,” and, “Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?” You don’t just say, “No, I’ll take orange juice,” and then turn away and start shaking hands.
You just don’t say “I’ll take orange juice.” It just isn’t done. When in a diner, one must drink the coffee. Everyone knows this. Scraping the cheese off your pizza? Couldn’t be more normal. Remove middle bun of BigMac? No problem, not even worth mentioning, actually. Carry around a few pounds of flavorless mush you call Rootmarm, diff’rent strokes &c. But order orange juice. In a diner?!? Unimaginable. The most shocking thing since (as MoDo told us) “John Kerry sank himself by windsurfing in spandex and ordering a cheese steak in Philly with Swiss instead of Cheez Whiz.” Truly, Candidate Kerry was history’s greatest monster.
And, frankly, can you imagine the level the emasculation meter would go to if it came out that Obama “subsists mainly on granola” out on the trail? Surely the Republic would fall to pieces. More, I mean.
If we’re going to focus relentlessly on the idiotic, can’t we at least apply the beloved false equivalency principle to that as well? Mitt removes middle bun; Democrats for middle bun. Opinions differ. Or, can we simply agree that everyone on this Earth has an odd eating preference of some stripe and just stop mentioning them. All of them. I, for one, just don’t care how my President (past, present, or future) takes his cheesesteak, or if he or she likes them at all, or if Rootmarm is what really turns their crank.
Likewise: diners. Find someplace new, media. There are a million doors in the naked city, and lots of them lead to rooms full of “common” people and are not, in fact, diners. Pie is even served in many of those rooms. So you know. Just imagine the possibilities.
Five years ago today, Lemkin began. Five posts after that, a pretty decent one about our collecive and idiotic relationship with the media was emitted. The one thousandth post was far less full of self regard than this one. Keep walking.
After fifteen hundred or so stellar posts to clip and save, we’ve traveled from Creed to Kubrick and back again. Frankly, I’m a fan of Sherroditus. Don’t know why, exactly, but will try to write more like that one in the coming five.
Also in store for loyal Lemkinites: the thrilling, youth-oriented reboot of four things, Ozmodiar, a floating green alien that only I can see, and wedding after wedding after wedding… Thanks for occasionally reading and commenting. That is all.
Kent Brockman: But first, a look at the local holiday that was called distasteful and puerile by a panel of hillbillies, Whacking Day! In a tradition that dates back to founding father Jebediah Springfield, every May 10th local residents gathered to drive snakes into the center of town and whack them to snake heaven. [footage plays] After exposing Alger Hiss, Honorary Grand Marshal Richard Nixon goes after another deadly hiss.
[Nixon accidentally repeatedly strikes a person holding a snake down for him.]
Nixon: Is Whacking Day over? [everyone boos] Thank you. Thanks for coming out.
Gingrich’s staff has these five file cabinets, four big ones and this little tiny one. Number one is ‘Newt’s ideas.’ Number two, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ Number three, number four, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ The little one is ‘Newt’s Good Ideas.’
Pretty much says it all:
The curious thing is that both McDonald’s and Smithfield know that gestation crates are bad news for a pig.
Though I admit considerable astonishment that McRib actually contains pork products of any kind. I was thinking smaller. And more legs.
Fox wants to cut our salaries in half because it says it can’t afford to continue making [The Simpsons] under what it calls the existing business model. Fox hasn’t explained what kind of new business model it has formulated to keep the show on the air, but clearly the less money they have to pay us in salary, the more they’re able to afford to continue broadcasting the show. And to this I say, fine — if pay cuts are what it will take to keep the show on the air, then cut my pay. In fact, to make it as easy as possible for Fox to keep new episodes of “The Simpsons” coming, I’m willing to let them cut my salary not just 45% but more than 70% — down to half of what they said they would be willing to pay us. All I would ask in return is that I be allowed a small share of the eventual profits.
My representatives broached this idea to Fox yesterday, asking the network how low a salary number I would have to accept to make a profit participation feasible. My representatives were told there was no such number. There were, the Fox people said, simply no circumstances under which the network would consider allowing me or any of the actors to share in the show’s success.
Rick Perry’s an idiot, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that
If you look closely at [Bruce] Keough’s rationale [for leaving the Romney:2012 campaign], it’s absurd. he claims he wants someone attached to “a certain set of political ideals,” but the only evidence he supplies of Romney changing those compared to 2008 is that he’s talking more about the economy and appearing more frequently sans necktie.
In which Matt Miller channels The Shining:
The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit. The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit.
[…]
“The spending spree is over,” Ryan said the other day, after the House passed his blueprint. “We cannot keep spending money we don’t have.” Except that by his own reckoning Ryan is planning to spend $6 trillion we don’t have in the next decade alone.
[…]
If I were Barack Obama, my mantra on this week’s debt tour and in the months ahead would be that we should lift the debt limit only by as much debt as is needed to accommodate Paul Ryan’s budget.
Lemkin 