Sunday, October 21, 2007
My lovely wife Shemane, son Rocco and I sat down in the quaint street café on the little postcard sidestreet of Paris one fine spring day.
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The Eiffel Tower loomed in the distance, and much friendly, positive energy glowed about from the smiling faces of the locals and many fellow Americans enjoying the France that we saved from the Nazis.
Reflecting lovingly on the Marshall Plan that provided this beautiful setting, we settled in for a full-on French dining experience with our European friends.
If the Nugents love anything, it is people and food.
Our taste buds and sacred temples are tuned to the purity and scrumptious perfection of wild venison, so we take our meals seriously.
French cuisine is rightfully famous, and we were giddy with anticipation as we reviewed the elaborate menu.
Ordering indigenous turtle soup and some escargot, we gobbled up the delicious French bread and the amazingly rich butter they have there. Yum.
Shemane chose the local fresh seafood. Rocco and I went for the mouth-watering flank steak, medium rare.
Now, we all know a few poor souls of self-restricted, same-ol', same-ol', bland, predictable, limited diets. But snails and turtle — like beef, lamb, venison, seafood, fowl, squab (pigeon) and so many other undeniably wonderful food choices — are what quality eating adventure should be.
Sushi or squab? To each his own.
Wide world of taste
We are amused whenever some goofy, mentally limited individual tries to tell others that they can't eat venison, that Koreans can't eat dog and cat or that our Chinese friends can't eat blowfish.
Some people cry out loud that beef cows and trout are A-OK to raise, slaughter, cook and eat. Somehow their intellect comes to a screeching halt when French people and gazillions of people around the world, like my son and I, eat horseflesh the same as Americans eat bovine flesh.
So what?
This insipid stranglehold of holier-than-thou audacity, this example of animal-rights lunacy, is shutting down thriving horse meat-processing operations around America.
In the process, it is taking surplus equines from the asset column and insanely forcing them into the liability column, all in the name of arrogant, selfish, dishonest, feel-good denial.
Sad, irresponsible and as "liberal" as it gets.
Write this down: Meat is food. Horsemeat is food. Banning horsemeat will not save the life of a single horse.
Surplus horses will continue to be killed. Though consumers abroad would pay for the meat, instead the carcasses will be buried and wasted.
Who doesn't know this? Better yet, who is so shallow as to pretend otherwise?
According to the Internal Revenue Service, until recently America's export of horsemeat rivaled beef and pork. It is a staple in France, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.
As the cult of denial slowly but surely destroys the American workplace, Mexico and other nations are more than happy to pick up where we run scared. Insane.
Hundreds laid off
Meanwhile, like the two long-running, successful Texas horsemeat operations being forced to close, the highly productive Cavel International plant in Illinois must lay off hundreds of employees.
Taxpayers are burdened with more than $16 million a year to kill and bury surplus horses. And of course, many horses are now doomed to certain neglect and suffering so some clowns can wallow in a fantasy world while conveniently turning their backs on reality. Feel better yet? Incredible.
So goes the culture war, with the left pretending to save whales and horses, while thoughtful, conscientious people wrestle with politically correct, intellectually bankrupt bureaucrats as we desperately try to force logic and honesty into policy making.
None of this will avert a Nugent family barbecue of some delicious horse-flank steaks and other such assorted protein.
Meanwhile, we'll try to figure out what in God's good name these maniacs are trying to prove. Maybe the French got us on this one.
Ted Nugent is a Waco-based musician and television show host.
