September 27, 2012
Students at a Kansas high school are claiming that the government is trying to starve them to death. In the teeny-weeny Great Plains town of Sharon Springs, which is possibly smaller than Michelle Obama’s bum, an English teacher and her pupils have collaborated on a song-parody video called “We Are Hungry” to vent their anger over a new law that places an 850-calorie limit on federally subsidized student lunches.
The singer”you are strongly encouraged to switch the sound off while watching this video unless you want his fragile warbling to be stuck in your brain like a bloodsucking leech”wails about how he “gave up food months ago” and “thought maybe we could find a way not to starve today” and that he has “no energy to run” and may wind up “crawling home tonight” unless someone carries his malnourished husk home, because what’s happening is just like the Holodomor:
To any honest person who’s not emotionally invested in what appears to be yet another insanely partisan hyper-politicizing of humble foodstuffs, it immediately becomes apparent that these kids aren”t quite starving. In fact, there is more than one Blue Ribbon winner on the school’s female volleyball team. Many of those girls appear as if they”ve eaten far more than their fair share of government hay.
And at the risk of stepping on the tender toes nestled within the gentle hearts that are tucked inside the marshmallow-soft minds of public-school students and their teacher-gurus nationwide, 850 calories is more than you get in a Whopper with cheese. And to our knowledge, no pistol-packing Stasi agents are preventing their parents from cramming their kids” backpacks with ten-pound care packages of pork cracklin’s and deep-fried Oreos, so what’s the big deal?
Yet the humble flames of their heartland outrage are being eagerly fanned by Republican pols seeking to repeal the calorie limits imposed by 2010’s multi-billion-dollar Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Iowa Congressman Steve King (moderately fat) and Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp (also moderately fat) are co-sponsoring the “No Hungry Kids Act,” which would enable America’s already unacceptably chunky schoolkids to gobble yet more tax-subsidized calories.
According to Rep. King:
The misguided nanny state, as advanced by Michelle Obama’s ‘Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act,’ was interpreted by Secretary [Tom] Vilsack to be a directive that, because some kids are overweight, he would put every child on a diet. Parents know that their kids deserve all of the healthy and nutritious food they want.
Well, it seems as if Mr. King is asking the “nanny state” to provide it. Since his last campaign received substantial contributions from the meat industry and he’s publicly defended “pink slime,” AKA “Soylent Pink,” it’s possible he’s merely a pawn of Big Beef’s attempts to get their hooves back in school lunchrooms. King is also running against Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s wife for reelection, so this appears to be some sort of shadowy power struggle between big-money interests who either prop up the USDA or who fall afoul of it.
