Idiocy at the Huffington Post
As a child I was told I had to eat my veggies because there were starving children in China. It's one of the oldest examples of parental manipulation in the book. My grandfather heard the same bogus line when he was a kid, only the starving children were in "Belgium" back then.
Even as a six-year-old I rolled my eyes at this nonsense. Apparently, however, such vapid cliches can still pass as thoughtful and profound commentary over at the Harridan Post. Check out the headline on Russell Shaw's piece about that proud Fourth of July tradition: Coney Island's hot dog eating contest.
While Children Starve, the Media Obsesses About a Hot-Dog-Eating Contest
Apparently, yesterday's harmless fun touched a nerve with Mr. Shaw, to say the least (emphasis mine.)
What kind of an entertainment-driven "hey look at that" carnival-like "news" culture do we live in where a bunch of two-legged pigs eating fat and salt-laden hot dogs by the dozens are garnering all this ink and online coverage for some championship hot-dog eating contest while at the same time...Hundreds of thousands of children throughout much of the Third World will die of malnutrition this week?
Not only children but adults.
Yes, you pigs..at the same time you swallowed down a succession of tube steaks to the cheers of your beer-swilling friends the starving are perishing.
Subtlety isn't exactly his strong suit, is it? Ironically, neither is pushing away from the table, if the photo above his byline is any indication. Takeru Kobayashi, the reigning six-year hot dog eating champion, weighs in a very fit 160 pounds, by contrast. If Shaw truly is ridden with so much "heartache" as a result of this wretched excess, perhaps he could send a portion of his own dinner plate to Bangladesh. Doing so would benefit himself as well as starving children in the Third World. With time and discipline, he might eventually even slim down to Kobayashi's waist size. Maybe he could join Hollywood in a "rolling fast".
But no, he'd rather call Kobayashi and all of us who saw (or even read about) the contest "pigs." Using Shaw's own logic, I wonder how he justifies expending so much "heartache" over some silly, once-a-year contest? You'd think there are plenty of problems in the world that are more deserving of attention than a few people in Coney Island eating some hot dogs.
Comments
What I want to know is: How many African children had to starve to provide Michael Moore with enough calories to be such a huge sack of shit?
I mean, by all rights those calories should have gone to starving children, right? So it's fair to say that Michael Moore starved those children.
In fact: Can't we say that Michael Moore effectively ate, what, two, three children who would be alive today if they had gotten those calories?
On top of everything else, multi-millionaire Michael Moore is a cannibal!
Posted by: withoutfeathers | July 5, 2006 10:50 AM
While the appeal of this particular ritual is a mystery to me, this kind of hue and cry over it is exactly the kind of non-issue that makes the left look ridiculous.
To focus on the hot-dog eating contest when the entire country is, as Marc Maron has said, "America: All You Can Eat....Strictly Enforced....World-Wide" seems to be looking for something to righteously indignant about. And frankly, there are enough REAL issues to make us quake with rage.
Posted by: Jill | July 5, 2006 12:22 PM
what the heck is a "rolling fast" supposed to do? Provide comedy for the rest of us?
The Breitbart article reminded me of the combat scenes against Hollywood types in "Team America." I don't know why.
Posted by: Rachel | July 5, 2006 12:45 PM
what the heck is a "rolling fast" supposed to do? Provide comedy for the rest of us?
The Breitbart article reminded me of the combat scenes against Hollywood types in "Team America." I don't know why.
Posted by: Rachel | July 5, 2006 12:46 PM
tag, Barry, you're it. I'm hungry.
Posted by: ortho | July 6, 2006 02:18 PM