28 June 2010
The Other White Meat
I heard the other day that ThinkGeek, an innovative novelty company, had come up with a new gag product. Previous efforts included a bogus fondue pot that worked from a USB connection to your office computer. Funny stuff.
The latest hoax was centered around a re-branded canned meat product. It looks to me like the canned corned beef from Libby’s that I keep as something to eat after the next big storm or terror attack. Anyway, the Geeks decided to buy several crates of it, strip off the labels and attach one of their own. They called it “Canned Unicorn Meat.”
Their tag line for the new delicacy? “Pâté is passé. Unicorn, the new white meat.” It promised to be an “excellent source of sparkles!” You can see they removed the original beef-product and added the metallic-flake magic.
I can see that you would not want to eat the stuff to begin with, much less with an additive of heavy metal, but it is sort of amusing. But of course no one is dealing with whimsy very well these days, and the National Pork Production Board rolled in on the Geeks with a nine-page cease-cease-and-desist order.
The Pork Board claimed copyright infringement on their signature advertising slogan: “Pork: the other white meat!”
I think the whole thing is unsettling, and I think the NPPB ought to have received their own letter from the King of Pork, Senator Robert Byrd.
There was a man of sparkles and magic. I was saddened to hear that he had passed away last night. He was 92, and had served for nearly a quarter of the time the Senate has existed. His four-volume history of the institution "The Senate: 1789-1989,"was thoughtful and authoritative.
He was wrong many times in his life, starting with a youthful membership of the Ku Klux Klan, and once spoke for fourteen consecutive hours in a filibuster against the Civil Rights Act. He considered the legislation to be an infringement on states rights, a simmering source of resentment that is bubbling up again today.
I had the opportunity to meet him a couple times when I worked on the Hill, and what was more impressive was that my older boy did too. He had a chance to be an intern for the Senate one magical summer before the endless wars started, a time that seems a little magical now. I think there was even a budget surplus that summer, and Robert Byrd himself trundled down to talk to the kids about the history of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.
He really did care, something I find remarkable in this town of charlatans and mountebanks.
Of course, he used the system to great advantage for his state. He was not shy about it, nor apologetic. Nearly everyone in Government has been held at risk of moving to Martinsburg, West By God, at one time or another. Fighting relocation to Byrdland has been a full-time occupation for some agencies.
Byrd used his record tenure in the Senate to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money.
I got tagged in one of the periodic exercises of his authority back in December of 2000.
I boarded a VIP-configured SH-60 Blackhawk helicopter with the Assistant Secretary who was complying with direction from the Senator’s office to go visit a little installation Senator Byrd had tucked in the Blue Ridge mountains.
God, there were some amazing things placed in West Virginia, all carefully porked into the Appropriations bills. The Alternate Atomic Clock, in case the primary one happened to skip an electron. The 300-foot radio telescope scanning the heavens to find E.T. The new Military Entrance Processing Facility to induct the tide of Mountaineer youth into the armed forces. The BATF and a dozen other agencies located on the only flat space in the state, just across the line from the real Virginia.
At the time, Senator Byrd was the ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee, sat on Armed Services, and upon the Rules Committee.
If you wanted to push the most important buttons in the Senate, you would find them on those committees. They make the rules for how legislation is considered, how much is allocated to them, and the biggest money sump in the government- the military. If he represented Michigan, there would be an international jetport in Traverse City, an eight lane superhighway to Northport and a supercomputer facility in Suttons Bay.
The fall foliage was still hanging dolefully on the trees as the helicopter roared up the valley, lending a faded orange tinge to everything. We flight-followed a narrow two-lane road that wound up from the Shenandoah River.
Where there was flat land, we saw long sheds of the industrial turkey farms that are the main industry thereabouts. But there wasn't much flat land, and other little farms were isolated by topography more than distance.
Over the head of the pass there was a larger valley, and at the bottom of the valley was a tract of brand new town homes constructed to house the workers at the government facility further up the hill. The little burg could make its own water and power, since there wasn't much in the way of a regional grid to hook up to.
The Honorable looked down from his VIP seat by the window and clicked his microphone button so we could hear him in our headphones. "Kind of remote up here" he observed. Someone pulled a fact sheet out of a briefcase and looked it over.
"Eighteen miles to the county seat, Mr. Secretary."
"As the crow flies?"
"They can't walk here, Sir. And there isn't really anything in between. Nearest mall is forty miles back to the east, back near the Shenandoah. 'Course, when it snows the people can't get there, but that is only seven or eight days a year."
We buzzed the village a couple times but the residents seemed blasé about having sleek military flying machines in the area. Later, one of the officials at the facility told us it was a very safe place because the County was the home stomping ground of the West Virginia Militia.
"Makes us feel secure, in a way. Unless they decide not to like us."
"Don't tell them you are from Washington looking for moonshine and you should be all right."
We looked the place over and found that it had absolutely nothing to offer us, except that the cost of living was low. We would have to construct new buildings, make allowances for housing additional people, do some road construction and bring in new telecommunications so we could talk to the place from Washington.
Oh, and it was a five hour drive to get there on a good day, forget it when it snows.
The Assistant Secretary sighed before we lifted off to return to the Pentagon. "The Senator will think it's perfect."
Whether you liked him or not, Senator Byrd was a force of nature in this town. And the people at the NPPB ought to be mindful of scolding people who claim to add magic to white meat. The King of Pork had the patent on that.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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