Elf Sternberg

I went to Nutrition Data, a reasonably helpful (usually) calorie and protein counter for all kinds of foods. I typed in "bacon," and it said,

Please narrow your search. Do you mean: Breakfast Cereals, Legumes and Legume Products, Poultry Products, Pork Products, Sausages and Luncheon Meats, Soups, Sauces, and Gravies, Fats and Oils, Baby Foods, Fast Foods, generic, Foods from A&W, Foods from Arby's, Foods from Back Yard Burgers, Foods from Burger King, Foods from Carl's Jr., Foods from Chick-fil-A, Foods from Culver's, Foods from Dairy Queen, Foods from Del Taco, Foods from Domino's, Foods from Hardee's, Foods from Krystal, Foods from McDonald's, Foods from Papa John's, Foods from Papa Murphy's, Foods from Subway, Foods from Wendy's, Foods from White Castle, Foods from Wienerschnitzel, [more...]

It's bacon! BACON. B. A. C. O. N. The meat of the gods, you stupid machine. How much more "narrowing" do you need?

From: Teabonics: creative grammar and spellings seen on Tea Party protest signs and t-shirts.

You know, I love to mock the silliness that is advertising, especially low-level advertising copy like this. Let's face it: if you're eating these "veggie snacks" in lieu of real vegetables, you're just not eating sensibly.

And then you find one of these. I did the math: the price is also 25% higher. So it's not a bargain. This is an attempt to upsell you on a convenient method of blowing your portion control, and that's all it is.

And finally, this sighting at the local Safeway. "Locally Grown" bananas? In Washington state? Really? I looked at the stickers on the bananas. I didn't know there was a town in Washington called "Guatemala." Or is that in Oregon? I'm not as familiar with our neighbor to the south.

Again with the talk radio! This one happened yesterday. Mark Levin, who for some reason I always imagine looks like the scrawny, evil rat from The Secret of NIMH, was out of his chair yesterday, and there was a guest host, Michael Barrett. He was ranting about how the "current generation" has thrown out the wisdom of the past, and has proclaimed:

Man, if you think marriage ought to be between a man and a woman, and not between two men and two women, you're not with it. If you think our country is great, you're not with it. If you believe we should support the troops, you're not with it. If you believe we should not write hateful things about women and should not put those songs on the radio, man, you're just not with it.

I was gobsmacked by the hateful idiocy contained in that rant. This is one of those classic "ascribe to your enemies all the qualities you perceive in yourself" rants that seem to be coming more and more out of the right.

Karl Rove famously described his strategy thusly. Find your own candidates greatest weakness. Now, accuse your opponent of it. He'll be so flustered with the idea that he'll have a hard time defending himself against it, it will distract from your own candidate's weakness, and it will give the press something to talk about. It worked well against John Kerry and Al Gore: both Vietnam Vets, both athletes, yet by impugning their physical courage and getting the press to talk about it, Rove was able to give his cheerleader and draft-dodger candidate breathing room to make alternative cases while Gore and Kerry flailed about, shocked and horrified that anyone would dare make such an attack on their patriotism.

Barrett's rant makes me think that the Rovian cancer has mestastasized within the conservative body politic. Because here he is, the conservative talk show host, advocating a hateful attitude toward his own country: most people, he says, are idiots. Hate them. Resent them. The 53% of Americans who voted for Obama are either hateful anti-Americans or they're pureblind idiots.

I believe we should give our troops all the support they need: most of that support ought to be dedicated to making sure they get home safely from the unnecessary war of choice. I believe that my country is great and founded on great principles: principles I desperately want my country to embrace and honor in the fullest. I believe that it was and always has been a mistake for the state to arbitrarily recognize the religious commitment called "marriage," and that there is room enough in our civilization for the odd 2% to have civil relationships that encourage fidelity and responsibility. I believe that respect toward women and men is a crucial part of our culture, and that the foul material heard in some radio doesn't deserve the attention it gets, but censorship isn't the answer.

But Barrett wasn't done with his rant. He went on to say,

Let me ask you something. They all say we shouldn't look to the past, but we should look forward. The past has nothing to teach us. Tradition isn't valuable. Let me ask you this: Are cars better than they were 30 years ago? Are your children safer than they were 30 years ago? Are parents better than they were 30 years ago?

Cars are better than they were 30 years ago. (1978? Holy cow, that was a crappy year for cars!) They're safer in an accident, they get much better mileage, and they require less costly maintenance. Fewer people die in automobile crashes than they did at any time in history.

Parents: in general, yes. They know more. They have access to more information. There's a better support system than ever in terms of education and community, if only you have the wherewithall to use it. If they let their children fail, they have fewer excuses than at any time in the past.

And yes, children are far safer than they were 30 years ago. Crime statistics universally show them to be safer now than in 1978, or 1968, or even 1958. The current generation is growing up healthier and just as ready to take on the world we're leaving them as we were ready to take on the world our parents left us.

When Barrett goes off like this, what he's really telling his audience is that we should hate our successes, and wish for the "simpler" time, when the violence and mayhem went on behind closed doors and in the back pages of the newspaper, and we lived in blissful ignorance of the agonies outside our little towns.

Barrett's anti-Americanism, his opposition to the progress we've made, is on full display in his words, and we shouldn't be afraid to call him on it.

This morning, for no reason I can recall precisely, I ended up on a "conservative T-shirt website," and as I was rolling through the inane collection of shallow "Great Nation" slogans and stupidies, I spotted this as the ultimate juxtaposition: On the left, images of their t-shirts; on the right, an ad column followed by one piece of site administrivia.

Dammit, why isn't this kind of cognitive dissonance painful?