Wednesday 9 November 2011

Step Away From The Bacon

It seems that the tactic of anti-food campaigners using the tobacco control template has been quite the fashion of late. Of course, previous examples have just imitated the terminology set out by tobacco control finger-waggers.

That's not to say that alarmist puritans won't derive just as much satisfaction in producing imagery to align their particular taboo substance with cigarettes, though.


Yes. Believe it or not, bacon is now the new tobacco. Well, for this week, anyway. Who knows what it will be in a few days time?

One of Iowa’s signature meat products took a shot Monday when an advocacy group planned to put up a billboard on Douglas Avenue near Merle Hay Mall equating eating bacon with smoking.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, based in Washington, D.C., backed up its anti-bacon message with a salvo at Des Moines’ annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, which celebrates the newfound chicness of bacon.
You're probably there before me, as I've mentioned PCRM before as nothing more than a PETA-funded front group for veganism. That's to say, a bunch of top drawer nutters like Kerry. But then, they don't look at all out of place amongst some of the other arguably insane campaigners we regularly feature here. Quite the opposite, in fact, they just emphasise the anti-social nature of every self-righteous body which seeks to restrict the enjoyment of others on dubious - and increasingly far-fetched - health grounds.

Brooks Reynolds, the Des Moines insurance man who founded the Bacon Festival five years ago, took the billboard and its message in stride.

He invited Susan Levin, the physician group’s education director, to visit next February’s Bacon Festival, which will be themed “Baconpocalypse Now: I love the smell of bacon in the morning.”

Reynolds asked Levin to “enjoy the fruits of Iowans’ labor and to live a little.”

“The Bacon Festival is fun,” he said.
Brooks Reynolds quite clearly doesn't understand these people! 'Fun' is as attractive to them as genital warts or dog vomit salad is to the rest of us.

As of Monday afternoon, Levin and the Physicians Group had not responded to the invitation.
No. Because that would involve cracking their hideous, grey, humourless faces.

For some strange reason, I've developed a sudden hankering for a nice juicy gammon steak. So much so that if Harvester were capable of selling one, I'd even be tempted to pop up there.


13 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Fair play, proper bacon is smoked first, so you can see how the confusion might arise.

Anonymous said...

I guess that’s the one thing about the anti-smoking movement. Having used pretty much every dirty trick in the book to push ever onwards and upwards in their quest for “smoke free everywhere,” they’ve pretty much left no new ground for any other campaigning groups to claim as their own. All the real “biggies” – the scare stories which have really made the gullible public jump around and go all “anti” – have been snapped up by anti-smoking. Cancer? Check. Heart disease? Check. Scary manipulated statistics? Check. Faux “research” presented as “proof?” Check. Harm to others? Check. For the sake of the cheeldren? Check. Government health warnings? Check. Graphic photos? Check. Ludicrously high taxation rates? Check.

Which goes a long way towards explaining why all these knock-on anti-this or anti-that groups use such similar words and (as in this example) even images as the anti-smoking movement. They simply don’t have any option – anti-smoking has already covered all the bases. There just isn’t any health, social or personal problem that the anti-smoking movement hasn’t claimed as its own already, so mimicking is the only option left for new campaigners to use.

But if I was an anti-bacon (or anti-sugar, or anti-alcohol) campaigner, I’d be putting on my most creative thinking cap and being very careful of treading on anti-smoking’s toes, ‘cos they’re a nasty lot when they’re riled, and they certainly won’t be wanting to share any of their hard won “flagship” ailments – like cancer – with anyone else, for fear that this might detract from their hard-won message that smoking, and smoking alone, is the cause of 99.9% of all cancers, anywhere, ever.

Angry Exile said...

Well, that's okay. I've never been inclined to shove a bacon sandwich up my arse anyway.

Anonymous said...

In case you're not a bacon eater yourself and don't feel like hating, bastardizing and denormalising those who do eat the filthy meat - just remember that breathing in filthy bacon fumes while it's frying could be just as fatal, even if it's being fried outdoors, as there's no safe level, not even a hurricane could blow away.

Anonymous said...

Try using toilet paper.

Lyn said...

Anonymous said: 'I guess that’s the one thing about the anti-smoking movement. ....' (Good post and totally agree)

Wonder what they think to the recent advert on TV - 'If you have had a cough for 3 weeks or more, it could be a sign of lung cancer' - surprised really that they haven't added "caused by smoking or SHS". Guess someone else got in on this one before rabid anti smoking lobbyists!

Perhaps making us all totally neurotic is the next step in this Dictatorship - that way we would be easier to manage and manipulate!

Anonymous said...

So just when every mole in the UK has been scrutinised in great detail, doctors are overwhelmed by people with coughs. How they must hate that advert.

Anonymous said...

I wonder - and this may be far-fetched - whether the mystifying lack of everyday compassion reported to have been experienced by old people in hospitals begins with a view by officialdom of the population as 'units' of society rather than unique human beings - not that by the time it has filtered through to the wards, this is in the conscious minds of the staff.

JuliaM said...

"Well, that's okay. I've never been inclined to shove a bacon sandwich up my arse anyway."

NTTAWWT... ;)

Anonymous said...

Angry Exile at 2:34

Bloody brilliant and hysterically funny comment!

David

Twenty_Rothmans said...

Angry Exile said...

Well, that's okay. I've never been inclined to shove a bacon sandwich up my arse anyway.


Don't knock it till you've tried it.

Susan Levin
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Presumably more fond of the mutton musket than the pork sword, if she's on solids to begin with.

Michael J. McFadden said...

And then of course there's the secondhand bacon fumes if you fry it!

Perhaps parents who cook bacon and eggs in the morning should have their children removed from them?

- MJM

Anonymous said...

Odd that someone named Levin (no bias here) should state a case against bacon. ;)

When I was growing up, the Jewish community -- and, yes, my parents and I have had many friends amonsgst them (who would have disagreed with Levin's comment on a widespread basis) -- had the highest recorded cases of colorectal cancer because they ate a lot of beef, which takes at least eight hours to digest.

I do recall two incidents in my local area over the past few years against pork:

1) at a local superette where a man held up a pack of bacon at Christmastime and yelled at the woman behind the till, 'You shouldn't be selling that here! I'm offended!' Naturally, we all looked at him as if he were mad.

2) A couple of years ago, our butcher had a large selection of pork in the window, and several people went in to complain. He said, 'If you're offended, don't look. End of.'

So, there seems to be a growing anti-pork movement here in the UK.

However -- and it's a big one -- the US has been down on pork and potatoes since the 1980s. Consumption is on a steep decline. Many people believe that pork is not only fatty, but 'unclean' (several demographic groups -- unmentioned for political correctness). Potatoes are presented in the media as having less useful food energy than rice, couscous or pasta.

My advice to everyone in the West is to consume more pork and potatoes!

Churchmouse