Pun Salad

Green Bay, WI - Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny's and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.

Many people pushed the low-fat idea not because the evidence backed it but because it conformed to their social and political prejudices. Low-fat diets appeal to puritanical moralists of all stripes. Leftists love to castigate the corporate world for providing a high-fat diet to ignorant masses. Blue Staters love to mock Red Staters for their presumed high-fat diets and so on. Indeed, for every study that people thought confirmed the idea there was easily one that refuted it. The idea that the benefits of low-fat diets were well proven came from the heavy marketing of cherry-picked studies.

Shannon goes on to draw parallels between this and other politically-hyped "science" that (predictably) points to Imminent Crisis and demands Immediate Government Action.

By all accounts, pork is is a minuscule drop in the bucket in terms of the overall budget. The bill could be (however) important in terms of changing the political climate in Washington. How can they be expected to trim the big spending items if they're unwilling to trim the small ones?

Not to mention that the whole pork thing is irredeemably seedy and unbecoming, in the cases where it's not actually corrupt. So go ahead and write your Congresscritters if you're so inclined.