My mother made the most wonderful chili in creation.
Just enough meat, just enough spicy heat, and you could enjoy and savor every last bit of it. She always made a huge pot of it when the weather turned bad.
One year, as a series of winter storms threatened the area, Miss Lois set to making her chili. The house was redolent with the wonderful smell.
Then we all got a stomach flu.
I don’t mean one of those annoying flubugs, but a gastrointestinal Revelation-esque plague that put other folks in the hospital.
It was a couple years before my wife and my brother could even look at chili again; it even took me a few months, but then again I am infamous for my ability to eat almost anything.
Sometimes certain foods have a psychosomatic effect. Most of the time, it’s a pleasant thing – fried chicken like your grandma’s, for instance, or Miss Lois’ chili – but sometimes it’s not so good.
For me, the candy known as Skittles gives me Post Disgusted Stress Disorder.
Okay, I have always despised Skittles (the candy, not our former dog by the same name, who has a new home, a new family and thankfully a new name.)
When we were flooded out by Hurricane Matthew, Miss Rhonda learned how to do some creative things with FEMA MREs, which do not belong in the same cabinet as military versions. We were thankful for what we had, don’t get me wrong, but to this day, my wife cannot abide the sight of a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart.
For me, it’s the Skittles. Even her magical gourmet skills couldn’t make Skittles good for anything.
I never liked them, even before we had no choice about how to satisfy a sweet tooth. I have always thought including Skittles in military and disaster rations was just a cruel joke. Then there are the independent analyses that show that the doggone things are downright toxic.
Nasty tasting, sticky, possibly poisonous – and now, they’re going insanely woke.
The maker of Skittles is catching flak right now because they have taken to printing virtue signaling/lawsuit reduction messages on their packages. The latest is “Black Trans Lives Matter.” When I first read the news about their proud new position, I thought for sure it was satire. I was wrong.
This modern world has me snorting more than a rutting goat – but in derision, not romance.
I am old enough to remember when candy wasn’t political, outside of the jelly beans on Ronald Reagan’s desk. Now we have toxic candy proclaiming how it supports a terrorist organization and transgenders. Talk about getting the most for your money.
Of course, my old standby, M and M’s, had some kind of controversy a few months back about the gender of its new candy. I am still trying to figure out how candy has a gender, or why it needs one in the first case.
Thankfully, there are more and more people sharing my disgust and disdain when it comes to consumer products.
The Bud Light fiasco is a perfect example.
People rejected Bud Light because it used a man who pretends to be a woman as a spokesperson. Instead of celebrating a firefighter, a soldier, or an ordinary citizen who stepped up for her next door neighbor, the brewer made a big deal celebrating a transgender’s first year as a “woman.”
Thankfully, Americans didn’t buy that choice, to the tune of a $30 billion loss for the brewer.
The brewer now literally cannot give the beer away. They have stooped to guilt-tripping beer drinkers for not buying it, saying that thousands of jobs will be lost, taxes will rise, the economy will crash and puppies will be kicked starving into the streets, if beer drinkers don’t accept and endorse a transgender spokesperson for their really lousy beer. I am only exaggerating a little. You can research it for yourself.
The Bud Light mess had almost calmed down, with the trans spokesman fleeing the country amidst alleged death threats (none of which ever resulted in a police report, by the way – again, research it for yourself), when another major American corporation just had to step in the proverbial cow paddy of political correctness. The makers of Skittles had to brag – on a package marketed toward children – that they endorse terrorism and transgenderism.
The manufacturer of Skittles is now trying to backtrack, having discovered that maybe their business model needed more thought.
I have had coyotes who stayed away from a certain kind of scent because their pack mates found out, the hard way, that the scent mean there was a trap nearby. Heck, I’ve even had possums who came understood that pancake syrup and canned salmon inside a box trap meant going to a new home, and they wandered around the trap, never going inside.
Yet somehow, those possums are smarter than the CEO and board of directors for a multi-billion dollar company. Somehow those folks didn’t take note that the American people are tired of politically correct posturing. The trendwatchers and surveyors and marketing specialists somehow missed that everyday Americans are disgusted with virtue signaling and they just want to be able to buy a product they like without being beaten over the head with a political message from either side.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, since I don’t drink alcohol and I never liked Bud Light when I did drink. I believe I adequately explained my position on the toxic waste drippings known as Skittles.
But a few things seem pretty simple to me.
Beer should be beer. Candy should be candy.
Neither needs to be a billboard for either side of the sociopolitical aisle.
It ain’t that difficult, and if you make it difficult, you deserve whatever the free market does to you.
