Saturday, January 29, 2011

Oh, the horror!

The students at an MLK Day banquet in – where else? – California managed to feel offended because the menu featured fried chicken and waffles. The egregious human-rights violation occurred at Cal-Irvine.
UC Irvine student Ricardo Sparks, the 20-year-old co-chairman of the university's Black Student Union, lodged a formal complaint with the administration.
. . . . .
[The director of communications for the Black Student Union said], "It takes all the radicalism and activism that we tried to do with the symposium and then [the cafeteria] serves chicken and waffles and takes away from all the stuff that we did."

Read it all here. The university, of course, did the obligatory ritual grovel for the silly bastards. Nothing undercuts your revolutionary agenda as badly as fried chicken and waffles. When the biggest bitch you can muster is chicken and waffles, you've pritnear run out of bitches. Give 'em the same gray roast beef and soggy peas that everyone else gets.
"There is nothing quite so enjoyable as a huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm." – Anthony Trollope, "Can You Forgive Her?"

4 comments:

Edith Ann said...

Things must be otherwise fabulous if this is their complaint.

When did waffles become ethnic food? I get the fried chicken part, but the waffles? I thought waffles were Belgian...

Sugar Magnolia said...

Many Southern joints have served chicken and waffles over the years. Don't ask me why, Edith Ann, it just seems to be a regional thing. I never really got it either...

What would they have preferred? Filet mignon with asparagus tips? Hell, I would eat fried chicken and waffles (and collard greens, and gumbo, and just about any other type of soul food you could think of, except maybe ox-tail soup - never could do that)any day of the week, especially if somebody else did the cooking and cleaning for once.

What little ingrates. Like you said, Mr. Loon, must be pritnear perfect lives if this is their biggest gripe.

By the way, I'm not looking forward to having leftover pizza tonight, but oh, well, it is what it is, and what it is is food, which a lot of people have to go without these days....I think I will be grateful for a full fridge, freezer, and pantry and shut my mouth. Maybe those babies pretending to be college-age adults can take a cue from me.

Truth Ferret said...

My husband would eat fried chicken every day if his heart would allow it. My question concerning the banquet is: was there watermelon in the fruit salad? Hopefully none of the wait staff was black or that would have been the tipping point, I suppose.

The Loon said...

TF: The Vicad had a policy that photos showing black folks and watermelons should never go in the paper. It's a no-win world on these questions. If there were black waiters, you're reducing them to a subservient role; if there were no black waiters, you've discriminated against them in employment.
EA: I think the chicken-and-waffles enthusiasm has spread lately. Wikipedia has an interesting, if vague, entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_and_waffles