Thursday, December 1, 2016

EXTRA: How can anybody consider corn flakes to be “un-American?”

About the time you read this on Thursday, there’s a good chance that I will have had my standard start to the day – a cup of coffee and cereal. Corn flakes is actually a favorite, with a banana chopped up into it.
Political protest? Or just breakfast? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Now under typical standards, I would think you could care less just what my breakfast routine is. In fact, I’d like to think that the majority of you will think I’ve gone goofy for sharing this tidbit with you.

BUT I GUESS I’m trying to get the attention of the other tiny percentage – those of you who are motivated by the Brietbart News Network and its claims that Kellogg’s is somehow “un-American.”

A concept I find so utterly ridiculous that I have to say the only people who are misfits to this country’s ideals are the ones who could somehow think that Tony the Tiger (the symbol of sister cereal Frosted Flakes) is un-American. Then again, they’re probably the same people who a generation ago claimed Tinky-Winky was gay – and that Teletubbies were a subversive plot to undermine our society by toying with the youthful mindset.

What has Brietbart, a socially-conservative leaning website that I must confess I pay little attention to (I also haven’t looked at the Drudge Report in years, and can’t say there was ever anything about it that was appealing to me), all up with its knickers in a bunch?

Yes, I’ve been watching too much BBC programming lately. But Brietbart is doing an attack because there are corporate entities that are reluctant to spend their advertising dollars to support the site because it is so over-the-top in its rhetoric in favor of Donald Trump.

SOME GO SO far as to claim the site is egging on those with racial and ethnic hang-ups (and are trying to justify them as legitimate with that “alt-right” label). In the case of Kellogg, they say the copy published these days by the Brietbart site, “aren’t aligned with our values.”

Which Brietbart wants to believe is Kellogg trying to “blacklist” their efforts. Which is such an exaggeration of the truth.

For it seems that Brietbart is peddling a rather subversive concept that says everybody is obligated to support their rhetorical nonsense. When in reality, any publishing entity has to realize that anything they publish has the potential to p-o anyone else – and sometimes those people will react accordingly.

If Brietbart really wants to stand their guns and refuse to alter their editorial policies, that’s their right. But it’s also the right of the public to support who they want. And if it turns out that Brietbart ticks off so many people that they wind up getting hurt financially, well that’s the reality of capitalism.

AND BECAUSE I’M offended by the concept of the schoolyard bully getting upset when everybody else fights back, I’m inclined to want to resist.

So if Brietbart is really going to call for a #DumpKellogs (yes, I know it’s spelled wrong) campaign on Twitter, I’m going to feel compelled to resist. I’m not about to urge people to eat more cold cereal – that’s their own business to decide.

But it will be with a touch of pride that I’ll make my political statement (as lame a gesture as it truly is) in eating up my corn flakes with vim and vigor.

Although it means I’m probably lucky, because I bought the above-purchased box when I went to the local supermarket Wednesday night. What kind of political statement would I have made if I – which I nearly did – bought a box of Corn Chex instead?

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