THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©
AN IRREVERENT VIEW
Time Line: September 3, 2007
Date Line: Flemington New Jersey
Over the years I have been conservative, moderate, liberal or all the above, depending on the phase of the moon. My values are simpler today: enough closets and bathrooms to house us, and a decent restaurant for cook’s night out. I’ve met the housing needs but I am still looking for that restaurant.
It might be my jaded palate, or a dim view about what sixteen spinach leaves should cost, but like Diogenes, I need a lantern to find an honest menu (and a Chef who can cook what the menu describes in purple prose).
Gone are the days of Luchow, where descriptions were simple and the food was satisfying. Poulet de Bresse was described as “Chicken” without mentioning where it was raised, what it had for breakfast, the color of its feathers, or its mother’s maiden name. It tasted great as I recall, even after forty years.
Today, Le Cordon Bleu doesn’t teach aspirants how to make a soufflé; the course now centers on how to write what a soufflé is, should look like, and taste. When patrons who order soufflés have had enough pre-dinner cocktails and selections from the wine list, Cordon Bleu knows it doesn’t matter what food looks or tastes like. The diner isn’t going to remember anything except perhaps the size of the tab and the taste of Maalox.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination, (once you are aware of the effects of menu prose) to understand the lack of truth and candor in Washington.
The typical first term Congressman is honest, open and dedicated to truth and his country. That is because he has arrived from No People SD with a menu background learned at Maisie’s Diner and Al’s Eats. He is thrown into the dining scene at the Capitol, unprepared or forewarned and in a matter of days is exposed to free range ostrich, yak butter knishes, and Borscht a la Kiev. They taste lousy but the menu prose is exciting beyond belief, and thus begins the loss of candor and American values.
No longer does the new legislator think of truth as it is. He thinks in terms of truth as it should be; believable even though not really accurate, persuasive but forgettable, cheap to utter and expensive to own. Now that is the kind of truth a man can get his teeth into. That is the kind of truth that can keep a man in office for ten terms or longer.
I don’t think ill of the Senators who are exposed (no pun intended) in public Men’s Rooms; or of homosexuals and wife cheaters who get political capital by railing against such conduct (when practiced by others). To know the cause is to understand, (but not forgive), the failing. **
We know the culprits: the only way to assure a return to normalcy, truth, prosperity and the Bible is to outlaw menu descriptions longer than four words per item. Not only will truth return to guide men’s lives, we will save the rain forests by reducing tons of paper dedicated to menu propaganda.
** (The Chronicle does not assume Karl Rove was a decent young man before he read a menu in an overpriced restaurant. Even menu prose won’t describe a covert CIA operative as “fair game”. For that you need a special kind of person.)
Howard Stamer
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