Friday, May 8

A Brief Note On The Inadvisability Of Sequestering Yourself With Like-Minded Thinkers For A Quarter-Century. With Mustard On Top.

PLENTY enough has been made of Dijongate already, but a Wonkette commenter (who said, roughly, Dijon mustard? That shit was only marginally exotic in the 80s.) reminds us that history is too often the Dead Relative Who Left Us Some Crappy Candy Dish or Something. Real Men Don't Eat Quiche came out in the early 80s, and was an instant mega-success of the Hoola Hoop/ Where's The Beef/ Ricky Martin sort. And the fact that it was a satire was, in certain quarters, well, totally missed.

And, granted, missing the point was actually a badge of pride in some percentage of those quarters, though you won't think that would include nebbishy guys who aspired to passing the Bar some day. Nevertheless, this, a misperception of a satirical poke at social trends thirty years ago, Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs meets Fern Bars replacing Chop Houses, with Wine in place of Corn Beer, is, if not the origin, at least the engine which drives the continuing obsession with condiments, leafy vegetables, and their possible link to someone overhearing you imagining you're gay. A one-note joke, misunderstood, then incubated over and over in a hothouse, and brought out occasionally in order to demonstrate that the same idiots who missed the point a generation ago still find it uproariously funny. Dudes. If Jethro Bodine with a mouthful of caviar is funny it's because of his unlettered expectations, not because no one should bother knowing the difference between Sevruga and Shit-on-a-Stick.

8 comments:

  1. It's sort of no-win for Barry. I mean, I can't imagine it's safe for him to say "Gimme French's" yet... I suppose he could have ordered ketchup.

    Incidentally, my secret to quiche is to bake some dijon mustard onto the crust before I fill it. I'm practically a communist.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ketchup, while vile, would not have solved the problem. You see, it's RED.

    Oh, and the means of production must belong to the worker, and so forth.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5:41 PM EDT

    Rednecks like 'spicy' condiments, too.

    It's called Tabasco, and they put it on every beef, pork and poultry part as well as pizza.

    No one ever seems to think it's too ethnic or elitist to use Tabasco.

    Quite odd since it's much spicier than dijon.

    ReplyDelete
  4. D. Sidhe5:42 AM EDT

    Yeah, my secret is to dice the meat and cheese and let the Velveeta rest at room temperature while you crumble the Ritz crackers for the crust and pan-fry the Spam so it's nicely browned. I serve it with catsup, too. And yet I'm guessing none of these fancy law school bastards would eat at my table, fucking elitists.

    What's more, I'm even too much of an elitist to eat fresh-grilled tarantula on banana leaf with stream water.

    What kind of unimaginative, narrow-minded moron goes around convinced only his diet's normal and everyone else's is a sign of character flaws? Oh, wait, the same kind of moron who thinks "empathy" is code for "queer".

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous5:43 PM EDT

    But...but...ARUGULA!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Here's the best measure of just how stupid these mus-tards are: they were pwned on this by David Frum.

    My world hasn't shifted so alarmingly since John Ashcroft, on drugs, was revealed to be the Bush Administration's voice of moral authority.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In fairness to these douchebags, it sounds like they were trying (and failing) to be funny.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh, come on. These people aren't scared of dijon. They just imagine it's going to cause an uprising in the doublewides of America, where their imaginary working class yeomen will be mystified and outraged by a condiment they sell a generic store version of at WalMart.

    Whenever you run into a populist uprising where everyone who wants to stick it to the man has either millions and/or a fellowship at a wingnut welfare shop, chances are the actual outrage is that it isn't working.

    ReplyDelete