I'm Tired of "I'm Tired"

Bill Cosby "I'm 83 and Tired" I've worked hard since I was 17. Except for when I was doing my National Service, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick in nearly 40 years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired. I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it. I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; Muslims burning schools for girls; Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to. I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and Madrasa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia , New Zealand , UK, America and Canada , while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance.. I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses or stick a needle in their arm while they tried to fight it off? I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems. I'm also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and early 20's be-deck themselves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making themselves unemployable and claiming money from the Government. Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 83.. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter and their children. Thank God I'm on the way out and not on the way in. There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on! This is your chance to make a difference. “I’m 83 and Iit was written'm tired. If you don't agree you are part of the problem!

The other day a friend reposted this trite essay that’s been floating around the inter-webs for a few years. Sometimes it’s attributed to Bill Cosby, or George Carlin or some such liberal. But in reality it was penned by a rightwing politician. My friend and some others said this resonated with them. It doesn’t resonate with me and I wish it didn’t resonate with them because I consider this a great example of hateful, lazy thinking. The last line really tells you where the author is coming from; “If you don't agree you are part of the problem!”… he said dusting off his hands as he walks away. End of story. Now he can go play some golf.

Well sir, I don’t agree and the fact is you are not part of the problem, you are the problem. More specifically, the kind of lazy thinking that this screed of yours propagates.

He’s tired of being told things that most likely no one has ever told him. He’s tired of dealing with people he’s never dealt with. And apparently he is unable to separate fact from fiction. And he’s certainly not going to burn another calorie thinking about it.

I suspect that like my friend, this author gets his information from 3 places, right wing media, corporate media, and his other rightwing friends and associates. There may have once been a liberal media, but that’s been mostly smothered to death by the profit motive. (But that’s a whole other diatribe)

I do feel confident that I have a lot more experience with real actual liberals than this author and by the way, none of them hate America (which is always implied).

I have lefty friends and I have righty friends. I used to consider myself a center left moderate, but the more I see and hear from right wing extremists, the farther left it pushes me.  And no, liberal does not equal commie.

Most of my right wing friends are from my earlier life or my in-laws.

After high school we all parted ways, they all joined the military and I embarked on a journey that became a career in the entertainment and media industry. I might’ve joined the military too, had I not had a preexisting condition that precluded the soldier’s life. All of us would have done just about anything to get as far away from our lives there as we could.

I personally have been very lucky to have had a widely varied and eclectic life so far. I’m not saying they haven’t but somehow their world view has become very myopic. This is the only explanation I can come up with for why some people seem to have abandoned critical thinking for ideology and believe essays like this without ever thinking “is this stuff true?”

So let’s take a look at this little piece of work and take it apart brick by brick.

He starts out talking about how hard he’s worked to get where he is and how he didn’t inherit his job or income, which I don’t doubt is true. That’s also true about most every liberal I personally have known, contrary to his implication otherwise. Everyone knows that a good work ethic is a big part of being successful, but a lot of people forget how much of a role, luck plays in their life as well.

For example, I’ll bet the author didn’t refinance his house just before he got laid off from what he thought was a job that would take him to retirement.

He was also lucky to have been born what he is; a white male.

People like him have the attitude of “if I can do it, anyone can. And if not it’s because they’re lazy”

Would he have that attitude if he were born a person of color, or perhaps a female in a depressed area where the only jobs available are min. wage fast food jobs?

I doubt it.

Tax hating republicans also forget that a great thing about living in America is the infrastructure that makes individual enterprise possible. The saying “Freedom isn’t free” also means if you want to live in a great civilization like this one, you have to contribute to it. Just because someone is out of work doesn’t mean they haven’t contributed or won’t ever again.

He obviously doesn’t realize that, actually, a very small percentage of his tax dollars go to welfare programs.

I have had some great successes and some great setbacks in life. On the setback side I have found myself in the welfare office and in the ER at USC-County (you know, where the poor people go) at times in my life.

What I saw in those places were not people who are lazy or felt entitled.

I saw people who are hungry or in need of medical care. Old people, children, single mothers and yes even white people who are unemployed or under employed who, at the time have no other recourse but to rely on the safety net that the taxes of a humanitarian society like ours provides.

Of course every society has its share of cheaters and freeloaders, but really, who harms our society more, people gaming the safety net, or the people gaming the boardrooms and civic chambers?

How many welfare cheats equals one Bernie Madoff? Or one Kenneth Lay? Or one Haliburton?

This author seems to make many assumptions about people he likely has never met.

I’d be almost willing to bet cash money that the things he knows about Muslims, he did not learn first hand from Muslims that he works and associates with.

Did he ever ask himself, were these attacks on us and others perpetrated by people because they are Muslims or because they are mentally deficient radical extremists who have completely misinterpreted the writings of their religion or their circumstances of life like, say, Timothy McVeigh, or James Holms?

There are a lot of countries that do shitty things to their populations, but so what? I don’t see us invading

North Korea or China because of it.

If his concern for the way women and children in Muslim countries are treated is so strong, I would think we would see more evidence of him crusading for women’s rights in this country and perhaps not voting for people who would like to repeal child labor laws.

His statement “I’m tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and Madrasa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia , New Zealand , UK, America and Canada , while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance.” is disingenuous at best, lazy at worst.

Another part of what makes America great is that we do have tolerance for other cultures. We let the Saudis and others have schools and mosques here when they don’t reciprocate because we are the better country. Is he tired of living in the better country?

And what about that Saudi oil? How would he react if all that went away and it became much harder and more expensive to fill his ten mile per gallon Hummer?

I’m guessing, not well.

And speaking of entitlement, I’m very sure that not one person has ever told him to lower his standard of living. Ever. And why would they. Since when are having a good standard of living and good stewardship of the planet we live on, mutually exclusive ideas? Maybe someone made fun of him for buying a gas guzzler at a time when gas was nearly five dollars a gallon, (you remember, right at the end of the Bush regime) and his feelings were hurt. He obviously mistakes being able to drive Bigfoot for a high standard of living.

Of course you can debate global warming. You can also debate evolution, gravity, the flatness of the earth, etc. Just because you don’t like science doesn’t mean you can ignore reality.

The more I read this tome the more I think this guy has a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work.

Let’s look at his hatred for addicts (and presumably alcoholics). I’m sure there are a number of medical professionals in this country that disagree with his declassification of addiction as a disease.

“Obviously when someone takes drugs or drinks too much they immediately stop being a human.”

“Let’s just throw them away because loading up the prisons with drug offenders is so much better and cheaper than rehab”… he said, once again dusting off his hands and walking away

I’m not particularly fond of addicts either, but ignoring the situation does not make it go away.

What do you get when you turn addicts into criminals and send them to prison? Bigger better criminals.

One thing I partially agree with is the bit about “sense of entitlement”. Particularly, those entitled rich people who got their wealth the old fashioned way, they inherited it. The majority of liberals I have known are hard working people with no sense of entitlement and by and large, the conservatives I’ve known have a huge sense of entitlement. Not in terms of what they think they can get from the govt. but in the idea that being an American means they are king of the world and can say dumb things like “freedom fries” with impunity.

Now let’s look at this last head scratcher, clearly a result of watching too much tabloid television;

“men and women in their teens and early 20's be-deck themselves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making themselves unemployable and claiming money from the Government.”

Really? This is an epidemic in his world? I wonder how many billions we could save if this didn’t happen? Perhaps if one wanted to be a Wal-Mart greeter or work for the FBI, having a Mike Tyson style face tattoo might be an impediment. On the other hand, I know at least one self adorned individual, who makes a nice six figure living. (Not in a circus freak show!)

It is too bad we all can’t be mistake free like him.

By the way, the real authors name is Robert A. Hall and he is not 83, he is 67.

He was a Mass state senator in the 70’s and 80’s and served for four years in Vietnam.

This thing has been around awhile and no doubt has been edited, but the sentiment is consistent.

His “I’m a hard working self made success and if I can do it anyone can and if they can’t they’re stupid and lazy” rhetoric is hateful. It assumes that the only explanation for anything wrong in this country is the fault of the“47%”, the sloth like idiots who aren’t exactly like him. That thinking can only be explained as hate. He hates people he’s never met because hating and dismissing are so much easier than thinking,

or problem solving.

Someone who sends this along and ascribes it to a liberal like Bill Cosby is hateful.

Someone who sends it along with bothering to question any of it is lazy.

Meg Whitman: Super Liberal!

Steve Poizner: Ultra Hippie!

Jerry Brown: Jerry Brown! 

OMG! The only choices for governor of California are two raging, left wing hippie commie liberals and Jerry Brown. What kind of crazy bizzarro world have I fallen into?

That’s what I was starting to think after seeing all those commercials by Meg and Steve.

One such ad begins, “How Liberal is Steve Poizner?” I thought it was going to have a punch line like, “He’s so liberal he wants to make pot smoking mandatory!” or “ He’s so liberal he’s friended Fidel Castro on Face Book.”

Disappointingly, the actual message is more akin to, “Steve Poizner is so liberal, I actually saw him make a left turn once!” (The horror!)

Then there is Meg  Whitman. “She’s so left wing she wants death panels to apply to everyone, not just old people.”  “She wants to just throw the borders open and let all the illegals come up and take your stuff.” Wow!  It’s as if Barry Goldwater came back from the grave to accuse Ronald Reagan of being a pinko.

Beckett, Pinter, or Ionesco couldn’t have written more absurdist tomes than these people have.

So I go over to Steve and Meg’s websites expecting to see some wild and crazy ideas about how to fix our currant governmental difficulties and wham there it is, the same bumper sticker sound bite slogans about cutting taxes, reducing the size of government and using the National Guard to stop illegal immigration. On both web sites are the exact same ideas, ones that are about as liberal as joining the chamber of commerce or the NRA.  It’s the perfect case of the pot calling the kettle red.

Now, just for a little more head spinning fun, I went over to check Jerry Brown’s site and sure enough, he’s Mr. Law and Order, Attorney General Bad-ass with military school tough love and putting punks in prison bla bla. What? I would’ve never guessed that this was the guy whose nickname used to be “Moonbeam.”

Of course if you spend a little time at these websites you’ll discover the truth about each candidate’s ideology, which is pretty boring. More often than not the ideology gets in the way of actual, workable, possibilities.

I’m sure that whoever wins in the “Meg & Steve Less Liberal Than Thou” sweepstakes is going to spend most of their time beating up on Jerry (and vise-a-versa) until November.

They’ll tell us how their opponent is a communist fascist McCarthyist Marxist who hates themselves and mankind. At least, based upon what I’ve seen so far, that’s what I’m expecting to hear.

Listening to candidates continuously pander to their base is not only a huge drag, it’s a big part of what’s wrong with this country’s political process. They don’t give us solutions, they just tell us what they think we want to hear.

It’s too bad, because I was hoping to hear some real practical plans about how to make California the shining, golden, near utopia it was when I moved here way back in 1981.

It was the land of opportunity, prosperity, facility, individuality, and realization.

Now let me think, who was governor then…

Gasp!  Moonbeam?

Reverse the Stupid

I’ve become very worried of late that as a society we may be on the verge of winning a collective Darwin Award. You know, the circumstance by which we make ourselves extinct due to an act of extreme stupidity. The guy who strapped himself into a lawn chair tethered to a jillion helium balloons comes to mind. They found his body washed up in the surf a few weeks later. I know this is an extreme example, but it illustrates what could happen to all of us if something isn’t done soon.

Climate change, swine flu, al-qaeda, Dancing With the Stars, to name a few, are threats to mankind that pale in comparison to the epidemic of stupid that is sweeping across the nation. What makes this disease all the more dangerous is the fact that the higher the degree of stupid, the less awareness people have of it. There is even a name for this condition. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Stupid people go around making bad decisions and stupid choices, all the while thinking they know better than anyone else.
To paraphrase the line from The Sixth Sense, “I see dumb people, but they don’t know they’re dumb”.

Conversely, the other half of the DK effect says that most smart people don’t think they’re necessarily any smarter than anyone else. That’s why they leave important decisions to dumb people, like congress for example.

Now don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying that I myself am immune to this malady. I’ve certainly made my share of confident wrong decisions. Like buying a Renault, getting a sub-prime re-fi, or letting an unlicensed contractor with a lowball bid re-roof my house. I could go on, but I’m not that stupid…

The good news is, I think I know what’s causing all this and possibly how to stop it and maybe even reverse the effects.

I call it “The Maggie May Conspiracy.”

In the late 1960’s the United States government developed a plan to control the citizenry of the country and eventually the whole world by reducing the collective IQ to that of a junior high school student. They did it by secretly implanting a chip that was reverse engineered from UFO technology (captured at Roswell) into each American under the guise of vaccinations. The chip was designed to lie dormant until a trigger activated it and began to reduce the IQ of each unknowing victim. In order to not raise suspicion, it had to react incrementally, lowering the IQ only 5 to 10 points at a time.

Then, in 1971 the trigger was created, the hit song Maggie May by Rod Stewart.
A team of government scientists worked tirelessly around the clock to come up with just the right balance of mind-numbing lyrics and annoyingly repetitive music so subtle yet so catchy that everyone who heard the first strains would be compelled to listen to the whole song, all the while being slowly and unwittingly stupefied. Like a viral pandemic the trigger became ubiquitous through mutation, such as Muzak, and TV and film soundtracks. Somehow, some way, every minute of every day, there is a version of Maggie May playing in someone’s ear.

We are at this very moment de-evolving into heavy-browed, knuckle-dragging, tree dwellers with an annoying song we can’t get out of our heads.

As brilliantly complicated as this diabolical plot is, there is a remedy that is equally brilliant in its simplicity. In order to counter the intelligence reduction, one must merely
recite the song title backwards three times in a row very loudly.

So, the next time you’re tempted to believe someone talking about death panels or WMD’s, or you’re about pick up a copy of the Enquirer, Globe, or Washington Times, or you’re about to watch an episode of The Hills, scream at the top of your lungs:
“Yam Eiggam, Yam Eiggam, Yam Eiggam!!!”

You will feel your intellect begin to expand almost immediately, and as you’re being carted off you will know for a fact how much smarter you are than those fools manhandling you.

Fine Obama Whine

In 2001 I was actually kind of glad that W won the election. How’s that for a crazy opening statement? It’s true. I was so sick and tired of the previous eight years of the constant bitching and whining by the Republicans about the Clinton administration, I thought that if Gore gets elected the whining would ramp up to such a horrible pitch that my head might literally explode. What a nasty mess that would be! Plus, I thought, how bad can W be? I mean the country is in pretty good shape, there’s a budget surplus for the first time since JFK, plenty of jobs, no wars. It could work, right?

Well for the first nine months every thing was pretty much ok. W looked like he was shaping up to be a pretty mediocre president, not a whole lot for either side to go nuts about. I had read “Fortunate Son” by J Hatfield so I figured he wasn’t going to be any kind of visionary or otherwise spectacular leader (as Al Franken said, “We elected the only guy in Texas who couldn’t find oil.”).

That didn’t matter much because the important thing is that the whining had stopped. Whew! My head did not explode and there would be no horrible bloody mess for my wife to clean up. As long as he didn’t get caught getting a bj in the oval office, I figured that the opposing ideological factions that existed in this country could return to a state of civility. You know, the kind where everybody works for the greater good.

We had taken a trip to Europe in April of that year and nearly every European we talked to thought we had shot ourselves in the foot as a country. “Probably” I said, “But listen… no whining.” Towards the end of our trip, on May 8th, after a long day of driving, we were watching euro TV in our provincial motel room and the only sound was cheering. Channel after euro channel of parades and re-enactments of American-loving V-E Day celebrations. Cheering is way nicer than whining.

Then of course 9/11 happened and for about ten minutes we were a country united against a common enemy. And then W stepped up from mediocrity and invaded the wrong country, fought a half-assed war in the right country, let Bin-Laden get away, gave sweetheart no-bid contracts to big oil companies, appointed incompetent cronies, ignored a hurricane, presided over the worst recession since the depression, and the list went on and on.

But the whining noise had already begun. First it was a cry of righteous anger about how our civil rights were being dismantled, habeas corpus being thrown out, lives being sacrificed, money being wasted, our leaders being caught lying to us on a mass scale. Soon however, those cries were drowned out by even more whining.

Question the President? That’s treasonous whaaa, whaaa. I want freedom fries whaa. The French won’t help us whaa, whaa. Either you’re with us or agin’ us whaa, whaa. It’s all Clinton’s fault whaa, whaa…
The pressure in my head began to build. I began researching places to live that had no access to media, TV, Internet, or other people. A cave in the Amazon jungle was starting to look pretty attractive.

I some how managed to survive the cacophonous noise that was very much like scraping your teeth along a chalkboard while sticking your hand into an commercial blender, all the way until 2008.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a new guy sprang onto the scene! A guy who was not a W or a W clone. He was an O as in hero, as in super hero. The O man was here to save the day!
He came from on high to rescue us from the evils, the villains, the Cheneys, the seventh circle of hell, and bring us all back onto the paths of righteousness.

This guy had it all. He was smart, honest, and handsome. He could speak in whole sentences. He could use multi-syllable words. He was a constutional scholar. He was altruistic yet pragmatic. I’ve got to vote for this guy I thought, he’s like a cross between JFK, Billy DeWilliams, and Gandhi!

Sadly, it wasn’t even three months after the inauguration when the shrill cries of contempt rose up like a chainsaw symphony. Oh the horrors! No birth certificate whaa, whaa! Not really American whaa, whaa! Death panels whaa, whaa. We want our country back whaa, whaa. He reads a teleprompter. He’s a grandma- and baby-killing Nazi-communist who wants to run General Motors whaa, whaa, whaa, whaa haaaa haaaa…

And if that wasn’t enough to make my ears bleed, the whining is now starting to come in stereo. Not just satisfied to perforate my right eardrum, the noise is also assaulting my left side. O is trying to do too much too soon whaa, whaa. He got the wrong kind of dog, he swatted a fly whaa, whaa. He hasn’t done anything, he hasn’t fixed eight years of stupid overnight whaa, whaa.

He can’t walk on water, he’s just a mere mortal human whaa, whaa, whaa!!!

Since Obamaman is less than a year into his term, I’m going to give him some room to work. He may not be Gandhi/Batman incarnate, but if you look at his record and the circumstances surrounding his ascension to the throne, he’s really done quite a lot.
I also think that the big O is working his strategy at a deliberate pace designed to have long-term success, and not just a quick fix.

Whether or not his policies work, there is still the danger that the whining will reach the kind of fever pitch that will make dogs howl and heads explode.

So I’m going to try to ride it out. But just in case, I’ll spread a tarp over the furniture and put earmuffs on the dogs.

Rush, Barnum, and The Rain Man

So by now you’ve probably seen or heard about Rush Limbaugh’s unrestricted 30-minute rant about President Obama on that paragon of news virtue, Fox News, this past Sunday.

And if you’re anything but a ditto head, you’re probably asking yourself (or anyone else within earshot) “What qualifies a thrice divorced, draft dodging college dropout, who’s never had a job in his life that took place outside of a radio booth, to pass judgment on the President of the United States?”

Actually, that’s the question I ask every time I hear an utterance from the great El Rushbo.

But the REAL question is why do we care? Because he’s a genius at making us care.

The fact Rush has little or no formal education has nothing to do with the phenomenon he has become, and rather than let the idea that he has no diversity in his work or life experiences be a hindrance, he has leveraged his ignorance to his great advantage. It makes it much easier for him to believe the things that he says. If he believes it, his audience believes it.

Witness Hannity and Beck who are also self- taught disc jockeys made good with cleverly crafted niche opinions. They don’t got to show you no stinking degrees. To Hannity’s credit, he does have carpentry experience he could fall back on.

No, qualification has no relevance here in the blurry lined world of punditry, news and entertainment. And certainly marital success has no place concerning ones expertise in politics, business, or opinion, (unless of course one is a marriage counselor or something).

Speaking of Rush’s three failed marriages, I’ve heard the term “beard” bandied about on the net quite a bit lately, which seems interesting given his alleged homophobia. But I digress. (Did you see what I just did there? I just inserted a baseless innuendo!)

The point is, Rush is quite a lot like another great American, PT Barnum. No, I’m not referring to the obvious, shopworn maxim “There’s a sucker born every minute.” I’m talking about the genius of Barnum’s ability to find a need and fill it, his ability to package himself as commerce dictated, and the gift of being the kind of self promoter that only comes along every hundred years or so.

That my friends is what it takes to be able to say whatever you want, about whomever you want, and ultimately getting a four hundred million dollar contract to do it. One must give the devil his due.

But… on second thought, owing to the fact that PT Barnum had a much more rounded career (Did you know that Barnum was elected to a two year term as a Connecticut legislator and the mayor of Bridgeport?), I think a comparison to the titular movie character Rain Man is far more apropos. If you recall, in the film Dustin Hoffman’s character was an idiot savant who lived in a world of his own. He was totally incapable in every aspect of his life except one thing. He was a genius at card counting. He had the gift of memorizing and manipulating any card deck in any casino.

Likewise Rush is a genius at only one thing: making us think about him. It doesn’t matter if we love him or hate him, as long as we’re thinking of him, he’s making the big money.

It doesn’t matter if we believe in him or care about his ideology. It doesn’t matter what we think of his qualifications, his ethics or his humanity. It really doesn’t matter that Rush probably doesn’t give a flying crap about what his audience thinks or feels about anything.

What matters is that Rush has the gift of manipulating an audience. That’s the gift that counts above all else when you live in a world where laissez-faire capitalism is the be-all and end-all of life.

All right, there is one other thing that matters… motivation.

People who are altruistic or at least have real ideological beliefs (whether I like them or not) take risks and run for office.

People who don’t, have radio shows…

Foxdogs

The thing is, I like cheeseburgers and I think that a lot of Americans do too.

Around where I live, I can walk three blocks in any direction and find a place that will sell me a cheeseburger and a coke. And that’s a lot like what the major news networks are about; they sell you cheeseburger and coke news.

Then one day, along comes a guy (let’s call him Rupert) who has an idea. “I’ll bet there are a lot of Americans who would like hotdog and root beer news!” he says, stroking his chin with a diabolical chuckle.

And he’s correct; I love a hotdog and a root beer once in a while. As it turns out, lots of Americans prefer hotdog and root beer news. Since Rupert’s the only one that sells that commodity, store for store he’s out-selling the others like gangbusters. That’s right, Foxdogs are number 1. There are a large number of people who only like Foxdogs. And then there are a bunch of folk who like them once in a while, for a change of pace.

But…since there are so many outlets like McCNNburger, Columbia Burgerking System, and Americanjack in the Boxcasting Company, burger news people like me needn’t feel threatened. There’s even something for the veggie burger crowd: MSNBCGardenburger (with TofuMaddow cheese).

The real puzzle here is, why are Foxdogs getting so upset for being labeled by the Whitecastle House for what the are? They are not McCNNburgers, they are Foxdogs. Why can’t they just be happy with what they are? Some times they try to sell us O’Reillydogs repackaged as Brit Humeburgers, but we’re not fooled. (They did try to sell those Bushpizzas for a few years but that just left a nasty taste in everyone’s mouth.)

So what? Foxdogs make a lot of money selling what they are selling. After all, isn’t that their goal? Why be ashamed of it? Instead of bitching about being called out for what they are, Der Beckwiener and the others should be happy with their fat market share.

And would it kill anybody to sell a taco once in a while?