Saturday, June 16, 2007

The nanny state

The government is looking after us. Two important groups are in charge of our welfare.
They are the Health Police and the Morality Police.

It really began, I think, with prohibition. This idea backfired terribly. It created criminals
( Joe Kennedy for example ) and scoffllaws by the many millions. Picture thousands of red necks
and hill billies, skulking about our forests with their stills cranking out gallons of moonshine,
some not too bad but some real rotgut too. The famous speakeasies and their patrons, scoff-laws all , include some of our finest citizens. Things got so bad that even the feds finally had to end it.

Then came the anti smokers. Both the morals and the health ones jumped on this one. It has been most effective. Smoking is down perhaps 75% in the last 15 years or so. Never mind that thousands of farmers and farm workers lost their livelyhood, as well as truckers and small retail outlets which lost a lucrative part of their business.

Now the health nuts are in complete charge. First, butter was bad so we ate margerine. Then margerine was worse so we are into olive oil. The eggs were bad. The day of cholesterol had arrived, and we were to be deprived of natures perfect food. MacDonalds was vilified. Their excellent hamburgers were deemed to be the unltimate junk food (meat, bread, letuce, tomatos are junk food ? ). Sugar should never be consumed. and this spawned an array of sugar substitutes which taste peculiar and may be harmful. Empty calories, we are told.

Now we are to worry about obesity. Do we care if some people are fat ? Is it really such a health problem for the whole nation ? Should we worry that fat people die a few years sooner that the skinny ones ? The world seem obsessed by longevity, at the cost of the bankruptcy of the social security system.

Final word : I can't find the spell check so no cracks about spelling and punctuation please.

3 comments:

El Ruco said...

Dear Rummy,

You mention Prohibition, indeed a great mistake. However on the brighter side it brought us characters like Eliot Ness, Lucky Luciano and Al Capone who, in many different forms have entertained us on TV and the big screen. It brought us the term “The Real McCoy” a runner who didn’t water or re-brand and was known to sell but the finest. It also revolutionized the design of speedboats for both open ocean and use on the great lakes which outran the Coast Guard with ease. And last but not least in was the real introduction of America to some really fine Caribbean Rums. Prohibition was repealed by FDR (D).

As to the cholesterol thing – my solution is to ignore it. I eat and cook with plenty of butter, eat lots of eggs and am partial to duck eggs which have wonderfully huge and bright yellow yolks. Tenderly fried on hashed browns – what a joy! Mc Donald’s I’ve never been fond of as my idea of a hamburger is thick, juicy and rare. I do seem to recall that they served a very passable chocolate malt. You are most generous suggesting that sugar substitutes taste peculiar. I find them a damned site worse than that. We’re only here once, why not enjoy it?

My spelling makes you look like a college English professor so I write and correct in Word then paste my blurb into your Blog.

By the way, your font shrunk.

Abrazos,

El Ruco

amycue said...

I simply cannot believe that seatbelts were not part of this last blog. Surely you can eleborate next time on that. Since I am the one who initially pointed out all your misspellings - I actually feel great glee when I see word after word misspelled and am thinking maybe I have a chance after all at beating you at upwords - just can't let Mom play!

Sonya said...

my theory is that at some point everything will be bad for you so just eat whatever the hell you want and live life to the fullest! so keep on smokin' and putting extra butter/salt on your foods and die a happy man!