Part
1
Perhaps only in Iowa could a candidate for the Senate
declare that her experience castrating pigs qualifies her for office.
Yes, OK, she means it as a wry, gateway metaphor for her
promise to “cut pork.” But it’s precisely this promise, not the tasteless image
of detesticled pigs, that I find most objectionable. The words have sound but
signify nothing. And that’s the point, really. They are short on meaning, long
on emotional resonance. The promise to
cut pork is comparable to promises to resuscitate the American Dream or restore
the middle class, to bring change you can believe in or apply sane business
practices, to transcend mere politics or be impregnable to the Washington
Beltway ethos. The words are lexical
black holes into which all meaning disappears.
What’s left is an emotional residue, a purr or snarl substituting for
substance. That, and the cynicism that
thinks that is enough.
Part 2
It’s always nice to know we can kill a sentient
creature and feel righteously comfortable about it.
The Animal Welfare Institute and Farm Sanctuary, two
animal welfare groups, have petitioned the Department of Agriculture to step up
inspection efforts at poultry slaughterhouses, so that birds whose necks are
not cut by an automatic knife are not dropped alive into scalding tanks. A Deputy Administrator of the Food Safety
Inspection Service says birds boiled to death in the scalding tanks violates
the Poultry Products Inspection Act; therefore, the FSIS would “take action,
because the animals would be dying other than by slaughter — they'd be
drowning, and not slaughtered in a humane way."
I confess I struggle with the ethical distinction
being made here. Aren’t the birds being
slaughtered in any event? Does
slaughtering a creature “in a humane way” even make sense? Can the words “humane” and “slaughter” dwell
in the same linguistic neighborhood? Is
dollying the adjective “humane” into place before the noun “slaughter” a kind
of verbal juke to avoid ethical anxiety?
Emerson says, "You have just dined, and
however scrupulously the slaughterhouse
is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” Wouldn’t the really humane thing be not to
slaughter the birds at all?
Part
3
A battle rages, and were I one who prefers his
breakfast delivered from a restaurant window through my car window, I’d be
caught up in the hostilities.
On one side, Taco Bell’s new offerings to the
on-the-go breakfast crowd—the Waffle Taco and the AM Crunchwrap. On the other, the
breakfast-market-share-leading McDonald’s and its iconic Egg McMuffin. Just about every article I’ve read has
described the two fast-fooderies as
engaged in the “breakfast wars” as they “battle it out” for the $50 million
breakfast market. TB is “taking aim” at
MickeyD’s. “Shots have been fired,” a
“salvo” has been launched, a “bomb” dropped, “heavy artillery” rolled out. McDonald’s will not be “ceding ground”
however; in offering free coffee for the next two weeks, it has “fired back”
with “coffee cannons.”
Well, metaphors structure how we see and understand,
so perhaps journalists describing the thrust and parry of two corporate giants
as a battle for the hearts and minds and palates of breakfasters everywhere
isn’t so unusual. It’s a no-brainer,
actually. And that is the problem.
What are we to make of the herd-mentality
journalism; the lazy, cliché-mongering, carnival-barking journalism; and, ultimately,
the cynical journalism that uses threadbare metaphor to attract and churn up
our interest in skirmishes over the vehicles by which eggs, meat, and cheese
are delivered? Why is it that the
important questions are never raised:
why do we break so fast to be breakfasted? What drives us through the drive
through? And how did a simple ritual of
daily home life get outsourced to corporate griddles, fryers, and microwaves?
Part
4
Who asked if roses wanted to be smelled and would
rather that passersby not stop to sniff?
Who questioned if they had any desire at all to symbolize someone’s love
or if they wanted their buds to be gathered?
Who wondered if lilies in their fields wished to be considered untoiling
or wanted to be gilded? Who inquired
whether or not apples aspired to keep doctors away, or be American pied, or
compared to oranges, or be in anyone’s eye or cheek, or represent the means of
humanity’s fall? Did grapes consent to
being known as wrathful? Who had
considered whether some potatoes preferred or be known as potahtoes, or even
cared about how the vowel was pronounced?
Would pickles appreciate being considered as no-win situations? Did anyone seek to know if daisies wanted to
relinquish their freshness, or prunes their wrinkledness or peaches their
fuzz? Perhaps peas do not want to share
a pod. Were olives OK with their
branches being held out as a token of peace, or cherries with being gathered in
life’s bowl, or carrots with being associated with sticks?
Did they want to be clichéd? Who consulted them? Who asked permission for their otherness, or
even thought to?
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