Keep your self-righteous fingers off my Twinkies -- in praise of white trash fast food

[Elmore Furth]

I think poor white trash ethnic food has gotten a bad rap. Keep your mitts off my Twinkies.

In Berlin they have a restaurant called, 'White Trash Fast Food.' The germans appreciate ethnic quisine.



http://new.whitetrashfastfood.com/
http://berlin.unlike.net/locations/269-White-Trash-Fast-Food


“A Big Mac - the communion wafer of consumption.”
John Ralston Saul (1947--)

Just in time for the worst economic downturn since the Depression, here comes a new crop of social critics to inform us that we're actually spending too little for the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the furniture we sit on and the gasoline that runs our automobiles.

Never mind that U.S. job losses these days range from 200,000 to 500,000 a month, that foreclosures are up 32% over this time last year and that people are re-learning how to clip newspaper coupons so as to save at the supermarket. Dire economic circumstances don't seem to faze these spending enthusiasts, who scold us for shopping at supermarkets instead of at farmer's markets, where a loaf of "artisanal" (and also "sustainable") rye bread sells for $8, ice cream for $6 a cup and organic tomatoes go for $4 a pound.

In an online debate with the Atlantic's economics writer, Megan McArdle, Shell observes with disapproval that, when prices are adjusted for inflation, Americans today spend "40% less on clothes, 20% less on food, more than 50% less on appliances, about 25% less on owning and maintaining a car" than they did during the early 1970s. Over that same period, Census Bureau tables show, U.S. median household income rose by at least 18% in constant dollars -- despite the much-lamented (by Shell and others) decampment of "once flourishing" manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere. That's why even America's poorest people nowadays can afford automobiles, cellphones and TVs.

Demanding that other people impoverish themselves, especially these days, in the name of your pet cause -- fostering craftsmanship, feeling "connected" to the land, "living more lightly on the planet" or whatever -- goes way beyond Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake." It's more like Marie Antoinette dressing up in her shepherdess costume and holding court in a fake rustic cottage at the Petit Trianon.

Keep your self-righteous fingers off my processed food

[randr]

1. The irony

is that the corporate food giants are feeding us "cake", just as Marie Antoinette would have liked it.

[DrDan]

2. wonder if this is on their menu - the latest in fair-cuisine

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32665106/ns/today-today_food_and_wine/

[moggie]

3. I wouldn't eat that!

Not unless he added cheese.