April 20, 2012

"The boy should know where his dinner is coming from. What do you think, Barry?"

More meat-oriented education from Lolo, Barack Obama's stepfather, as told by Obama in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." This scene occurs when Obama, age 6, first arrives from Hawaii in his new home in Jakarta:
[T]he man who had carried our luggage was standing in the backyard with a rust-colored hen tucked under his arm and a long knife in his right hand. He said something to Lolo, who nodded and called over to my mother and me. My mother told me to wait where I was and sent Lolo a questioning glance.

“Don’t you think he’s a little young?”

Lolo shrugged and looked down at me. “The boy should know where his dinner is coming from. What do you think, Barry?” I looked at my mother, then turned back to face the man holding the chicken. Lolo nodded again, and I watched the man set the bird down, pinning it gently under one knee and pulling its neck out across a narrow gutter.
For a moment the bird struggled, beating its wings hard against the ground, a few feathers dancing up with the wind. Then it grew completely still. The man pulled the blade across the bird’s neck in a single smooth motion. Blood shot out in a long, crimson ribbon. The man stood up, holding the bird far away from his body, and suddenly tossed it high into the air. It landed with a thud, then struggled to its feet, its head lolling grotesquely against its side, its legs pumping wildly in a wide, wobbly circle. I watched as the circle grew smaller, the blood trickling down to a gurgle, until finally the bird collapsed, lifeless on the grass.
Lolo rubbed his hand across my head and told me and my mother to go wash up before dinner. The three of us ate quietly under a dim yellow bulb—chicken stew and rice, and then a dessert of red, hairy-skinned fruit so sweet at the center that only a stomachache could make me stop. Later, lying alone beneath a mosquito net canopy, I listened to the crickets chirp under the moonlight and remembered the last twitch of life that I’d witnessed a few hours before. I could barely believe my good fortune.
Good fortune? Why does the boy — as remembered by the man — connect the killing of the bird to his own good fortune? Is it some elemental realization that simply to be alive is amazing, the bird being dead? Or is he excited to be in this new place with lots of thrilling new activities like beheading a bird and shortly thereafter eating it? Or is it the connection to the father figure, who's so eager to show the boy what life is really about and so easily overcomes the reticence of the mother? The next thing that happens in the book is that Lolo teaches him how to deal with bullies: Don't cry over the lump where he hit you with a rock; learn boxing. Lolo buys boxing gloves for him and teaches him to "keep moving, but always stay low—don’t give them a target." Good advice!

And it's on the very next page that Lolo teaches him to eat dog (and snake) meat. The dog-meat paragraph begins with them boxing and proceeds to a quick summary of things done in the first 6 months in Indonesia: he'd "learn[ed] Indonesia’s language, its customs, and its legends," he'd "survived chicken pox, measles, and the sting of my teachers’ bamboo switches," he'd made friends with "children of farmers, servants, and low-level bureaucrats," and they'd run about "hustling odd jobs, catching crickets, battling swift kites with razor-sharp lines." The point is: Life was a big adventure. And meat was part of the adventure — meat from real animals that lived and died.

Do you eat meat? If you eat meat, but not dogs, is it because, with respect to the meat that you do eat, you don't know where your dinner is coming from?

87 comments:

alan markus said...

Here's a YouTube version of that (courtesy HopeN'Change Cartoons):

Obama Eats Dog - And More Shocking Secrets!

Scott M said...

Why does the boy — as remembered by the man — connect the killing of the bird to his own good fortune.

Voodoo.

Matt Sablan said...

Obama knows how to box? That's actually kind of cool.

Lyle said...

Cows and chicken aren't my domesticated pets and companions. They are domesticated for my sustenance.

If I had to survive, then horse, cat and dog would suffice.

SteveR said...

The bottom line for me is the unbelievabilty of remembering something like that. g

traditionalguy said...

Methinks Barry saw the power of killing another living thing and taking its stuff for your use.

That is a man's base instinct that society has had to restrain with a Death penalty. Hunter gatherers may no longer hunt and gather other humans, except in self defense and wars.

I have noticed that our President sure loves to use Killer Drones watching the digital feeds as Arab guys run around in circles to escape and then are snuffed out.

Also of interest, the community that Obama Organized is now insanely murdering one another at a greater rate every year.

Maybe Obama's chickens are coming home to roost, as Pastor Wright prophesied.

Bob Ellison said...

But Obama ate...

Oh, sorry. Covered. Never mind. I'll be back.

Matt Sablan said...

When I was young, I always thought I was lucky to have food on the table. I think that's all he was realizing, that there was a cost to it all. You may know that as a kid, but you rarely have someone demonstrate it for you so graphically.

FloridaSteve said...

Can you pluck, trim and cook a chicken that quickly (when it's so freshly killed) I'm guessing in the late afternoon to eat in time for dinner? I honestly don't know but from the stories my grandmother has told me plucking was a bit of a time consuming chore.

I'm Full of Soup said...

The more I read snippets from his book, the more skeptical I am that Prez Obama truly wrote it because it does not sound like him at all.

Matt Sablan said...

Might've been like on TV; there's the pot for show, and then another pre-cooked pot for the "this is what it looks like after three hours of baking." Or they ate really late; no reason to think this story is a lie.

The Ghost said...

we eat cows instead of dogs because ...

1) they taste better than dogs
2) you can teach a dog to do their business outside the house ...
3) cows don't chase cats ...
4) we live in a country that manages to figure out how the FEED ITSELF without resorting to eating dogs and snakes ...

pdug said...

"the sting of my teachers’ bamboo switches,"

So Obama was a victim of child abuse?

Matt Sablan said...

Lynch: Some people don't sound like them in their writing. The writer in these passages feels very relate-able and excitable, not like the President. But, I've never heard him in casual conversation about intimate parts of his life. Also, we don't know how much editors changed. So, just because the language seems different isn't enough to convince me he didn't write it.

prairie wind said...

AJLynch...my thoughts exactly. This is the first excerpt I've read, and I cannot believe it came from the stammering fool who gets everything wrong.

Obama knows how to box? That's actually kind of cool.

Haha! Remember the rule: if Obama said it, it is not true. Of course, returning to my initial observation that there is no way he wrote this, "if he said it" probably doesn't apply here.

Edgehopper said...

Not mich to add on the particular account of Obama's childhood, but does anyone else remember the video from 2008 in which Sarah Palin was speaking while chickens were being slaughtered for food behind her, and there was an uproar about her callousness? How come no one in 2008 found this passage, like they found the dog passage in response to the Seamus smear?

X said...

I've eaten plenty of cows I knew. I don't eat dog because they threw their lot in with us over 10,000 years ago and have been loyal friends. To eat them would be a betrayal of trust. They earn their keep without being food.

Dante said...

I think Americans should know where their food stamps come from.

Matt Sablan said...

Edgehopper: Because Dreams of My Father is like Citizen Kane. No one actually read it. I half believe that whoever found this just found an E-Book version and CTRL+F for dog to see what came up after the Seamus story, after all, most people growing up are around dogs and have funny or interesting dog stories.

edutcher said...

He probably thought the knife was cool. Boys that age - yeah, even effete little Him - think knives and swords and guns are all cool.

Notice Mumsy wants to shelter him from all that stuff.

Matthew Sablan said...

Obama knows how to box? That's actually kind of cool.

Probably hits like a girl.

Wince said...

Dante said...
I think Americans should know where their food stamps come from.

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner for the thread.

Cedarford said...

I think Obama is basically a decent guy but not a good President. As a tabula rasa for the desires of others, though, he has been symbolized for being things he really is not - the uber-genius lawyer, the man who will heal the planet, the Magic Negro who will morally redeem liberals and progressive Jews. Who will lead women and blacks and transgendered to a land of milk and honey.

And just as The One is perfect to his adorers - they must cast his rivals as evil.
Hillary, bad old white woman.
McCain, the moron not fit to carry a law text the former President of Harvard Law Review carries around to TEACH the children, the children!
Palin the ignorant slut whore.
Now Romney - souless, unAmerican killer of jobs - that wants to bring back the days of Bull Connor, lynchings, blacks in the back of the bus, and jews of the media investigated for subversion. And Romney hates dogs and women!

--------------
Unfortunately for Obama, the activities of his followers and scripwriters that hype up Obama as black Jesus and his foes as foul hellspawn demons mean that to beat Obama, he must be torn down from his God Like pedestel.

The Romney people are smarter than the McCain ones.

Jane the Actuary said...

You know, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but how does this rather sophisticated writing style compare to his other book?

In my world, ghostwriting would be fine, but the amount of ghostwriting would have to be disclosed to the reader. I hate reading a book and, at the end, learning that the "author" really just sat for a long set of interviews with a professional ghostwriter. Many years ago, I read a book which was written in the first person, but where the "true" author was credited as author, which the statement that it made more sense to write the biography in the first person. Probably doesn't happen any more.

Cedarford said...

does anyone else remember the video from 2008 in which Sarah Palin was speaking while chickens were being slaughtered for food behind her, and there was an uproar about her callousness? How come no one in 2008 found this passage, like they found the dog passage in response to the Seamus smear?

=========================
Again, Romney & the Romney people appear smarter than the the two Rep 2008 candidates or the people behind McCain and Palin.

traditionalguy said...

Eat Mor Chikin! The Cow ads created for Chick-fil-A are some of the the best ad work done in years.

But eating cookies is within children's territory. Therefore the Obama Campaign must be planning on sending an army children under 18 to the polls with fake IDs to vote against the war Against Cookies candidate.

dhagood said...

@stever: i watched a pig get slaughtered in an uncle's slaughterhouse for exactly the same reason. i was 7 years old, and i remember that afternoon very clearly.

carrie said...

I saw my first chicken butchered when I was 6 or 7 and believe me you don't forget that. This makes me like Obama better. He really did have a difficult life and, like most kids, he was able to put the best spin on it possible because he really had no choice but to endure whatever was thrown at him at that age and that far away from anyone else who could help him.

ed said...

Honestly that's a stupid way of killing a chicken. The way I used to do this under the direction of my aunt was to shove the chicken head down into a large funnel (made for this purpose) until the head and neck is exposed at the small end. Then you cut the throat, the chicken dies and then you hang the bird by the feet, get a chair and get ready to pluck the damn feathers.

Everything is easy except the feather plucking because you've got to get every last one and it's simply amazing how many small feathers one scrawny rooster will have on it's carcass.

Chip Ahoy said...

My favorite part of today's reading was where the chicken's wings were beating hard agains the ground and a few feathers danced up with the wind

from the wings that were doing the beating, and glinted in the sun as they rose and they danced and reflected that light back onto the face of the inscrutable implacable child of promise standing there in calm deliberation, no wait, I mean shined on me, standing there with Lolo saying, "See?"

(wv is welcomen)

Rusty said...

FloridaSteve said...
Can you pluck, trim and cook a chicken that quickly (when it's so freshly killed) I'm guessing in the late afternoon to eat in time for dinner? I honestly don't know but from the stories my grandmother has told me plucking was a bit of a time consuming chore.



People that do it all the time are amazingly quick at it. My grandmother raised chickens and we ate a few for Sunday dinner. One trick is to dip it boiling water and strip off the feathers. They come off easily that way.

The Ghost said...
we eat cows instead of dogs because ...

1) they taste better than dogs
2) you can teach a dog to do their business outside the house ...
3) cows don't chase cats ...
4) we live in a country that manages to figure out how the FEED ITSELF without resorting to eating dogs and snakes

The Plains Indians ate dog all the time. Louis and Clark were made fun of by the Nez Pierce because they preferred dog to Elk.

Chip Ahoy said...

The way I saw it on the teevee is they have a log set with a flat end up and two penny nails hammered into it at chicken neck width apart. The chicken's neck is real stretchy, and the chicken is probably thinking, "hey why is this guy showing me this log so close up?" Then, whap. The chicken goes off flapping around spraying blood all over everything. Very messy, and you're standing there with a chicken head in one hand and a hatchet in the other.

chickelit said...

I predicted that heads would roll link. I didn't realize that it would be a chicken's head.

Franklin said...

Bill Ayers really did write that book, didn't he?

(I know I've got to be crazy to think that, but there you go.)

yashu said...

Interesting. I imagine that the thrill the boy felt, learning those harsh ugly (yet exciting, in their own way romantic) truths from Lolo-- about ruthlessness and violence and power as the basis of life, an education that felt to the boy like an exotic adventure-- might have been echoed, later, in the thrill the young man felt in the radical chic company of revolutionary Marxist intellectuals and activists, in the company of terrorists like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and even later in the pews listening to the fiery diatribes of Rev. Wright.

The way he describes the killing of the bird is intensely beautiful: a graceful dance between Lolo and the bird, the spurt of blood "shot out in a long, crimson ribbon." And after witnessing the gruesome event (described as a thrillingly beautiful experience), the little boy-- who got to prove his toughness to the father figure, by taking this lesson in stride-- is rewarded with affection ("Lolo rubbed his hand across my head").

"Radical chic" is not just political-- it has an aesthetic and even erotic allure. An aura of exotic adventure. The lessons and supposed "truths" purveyed by Marxist radicals, revolutionaries, activists, terrorists-- about ruthlessness and violence and power as the basis not just of life, but society-- have a kinship with the thrilling lessons of Lolo. There's a frisson, an exhilaration, to feeling like you're peeling back the skin of polite, civilized society, looking squarely at the violent, bloody red reality beneath.

There's something of this in Critical Legal Studies (Derrick Bell) and black liberation theology (Rev. Wright) too. The thrill that little boy felt, feeling tough and powerful-- capable too, one day, of being a man, pulling the blade across a neck. Because that's what you need to do, ultimately, to get your dinner. Living in a dog eat dog (capitalist, imperialist, white-man's) world.

"Punching back twice as hard," "bringing a gun to a knife fight" and other tough-guy Obama sayings are maxims you might hear from an Ayers or Alinsky, but it also sounds exactly like something that might come from the mouth of Lolo (as portrayed here).

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Many's the time I've taught a child the source of our dinner by removing the plastic wrap from the styrofoam tray with a flourish.

rcommal said...

My mom had vivid memories from when she was a tiny girl (and, of course, later, since it was a normal, routine activity) of watching her dad, a farmer, beheading chickens. I remember when I was kid that when, omeone would say, "They're running around like chickens with their heads cuts off," my mom would comment, either under her breath or afterward, "Well, no, not really." LOL.

One of the last times I talked to her before she died, she brought up the story of her dad and the chickens, I kid you not. 70-odd years after her first witnessing that, it was still vivid. Memory and childhood impressions are funny, and interesting, things.

edutcher said...

Cedarford said...

does anyone else remember the video from 2008 in which Sarah Palin was speaking while chickens were being slaughtered for food behind her, and there was an uproar about her callousness? How come no one in 2008 found this passage, like they found the dog passage in response to the Seamus smear?

They were turkeys at Thanksgiving and the "uproar" went about as far as the Seamus story.

Most people laughed at the "horror" of the Lefties.

=========================
Again, Romney & the Romney people appear smarter than the the two Rep 2008 candidates or the people behind McCain and Palin.

No, once she went rogue, Miss Sarah did all right for herself.

The issue, as one of the other commenters (tell me who and I will acknowledge) noted, was that the average professional politician doesn't know much about media, so the Lefties, with the broadcast nets, Mad Ave, and Hollyweird at their disposal, can run rings around them.

The Romster OTOH is a businessman and has been involved with marketing all his working life.

He also understands how to fight back against Uncle Saul's Rules - the first principle of which is don't let a charge go unanswered.

Anonymous said...

What strikes me about the passage is that BO may have realized that he had a Dad for the first time. Dads are here to show boys how things ARE. Moms often try to keep hard, sad things from children ("don't you think he's a little young?") Dads know chickens die to feed us. Dads know boys need to know that fact too.

chickelit said...

@yashu: Thanks for reminding us that we're all pinko red inside.

chickelit said...

The first animal I saw dad kill was a squirrel. Mom cooked it and we ate it.

THE END

ndspinelli said...

Nick Offerman[aka Ron Swanson] had a performance in Madison. I didn't get to see it but the reviews indicated he is a meat loving, libertarian man's man like his tv persona. He's just what this pretentious, elitist city needs

yashu said...

NB the lessons of Lolo might have been absorbed by a boy who grew up to be a right-wing conservative too! Learning "where your dinner is coming from" is an important part of right-wing ideology too.

I'm just speculatively, fancifully tracing links between what we know of the boy (at least from this passage, which is all I've read of his memoirs) and what we know of the man. But a passage like this might just as plausibly appear in the memoirs of a man who grew up to be a ruthless capitalist. Or a self-sufficient libertarian.

But what caught my attention is that the pivotal chicken-killing is not described as a gruesome, difficult, hard to digest lesson for the boy-- but as a thrilling, exhilarating, beautiful experience. An exotic adventure. As opposed to, say, a painful or shocking realization of the facts of life.

chickelit said...

c4 noted: Again, Romney & the Romney people appear smarter than the the two Rep 2008 candidates or the people behind McCain and Palin.

As first noted here, when it comes to PDS, Cedarford is in a class by himself.

chickelit said...

One time growing up my dad threw himself a big birthday party (he must have been turning 40 or something). Being the midwest, we didn't have access to seafood so he took me and my brother over to the abandoned gravel quarry to catch crayfish the morning before. We chased them down underwater with mask and fins and we must have gathered a couple of 5-gallon bucketfuls of the critters. He boiled a huge pot of water on the Coleman stove later on in the backyard and we boiled them up alive. Crayfish turns bright red just like lobster does. My mom made some Wisconsin "drawn butter" and it was a tasty feast. He called it "Poorman's Lobster."

I haven't thought about that until just now nor have I had crayfish since.

kathleen said...

Life was a big adventure? Not for the reader. For the reader, life was an endless list of items given in sets of three.
Language, customs, legends
Farmers, servants, bureaucrats
uh uh uh

garage mahal said...

@chickenlittle
Northern pike has a real nice white flesh and makes for a really good poormans lobster too. Do NOT overcook! Probably the most versatile and underrated eating fish, even by people that should know better. As good or even better than walleye, and unbelievably good pickled. I would show you on your visit to Wisconsin but I understand you're afraid of boats?

chickelit said...

but I understand you're afraid of boats?

Total misunderstand. Not in the least.

ricpic said...

My guess is that based on the two posts today that are all about Obama's excruciating sensitivity, Althouse will vote for him a second time. Hey, it's a free country. Go with whatever fiction fits your proclivity.

Rabel said...

I read a little of "Dreams" on Amazon.

The level of detail he recalls from his youth is simply amazing. A man with a memory like that ought to be the President.

Unless he's, you know, just making it all up.

edutcher said...

Or riffing off the life story and ideas of some guy down the street.

Unknown said...

Sounds like brainwashing to me.

Howard said...

Meadhouse serving up more raw meat for the 'baggers who pay for the road trips to Austin.

raf said...

Life was a big adventure? Not for the reader. For the reader, life was an endless list of items given in sets of three.
Language, customs, legends
Farmers, servants, bureaucrats
uh uh uh


That should be "mm mm mm."

AllenS said...

If you want a nothern fish that tastes exactly, and I mean ezactly like lobster, try eel pout.

mitrii said...

I hope Obama did not visit some cannibal tribes as well? And eat the local food?

Don M said...

Pike is yummy.

We crossed a Coho Salmon with a Walleye, to make a proper fish, and the cross breed hybrid lost its roe on the rocky stream bottoms. We called the failed hybrid a CoWal

So then we crossed the CoWal with a Muskie to slim it out. We called the triple hybrid a CoWalSky, and we would have a great fish if we could teach the dumb thing how to swim.

TheThinMan said...

RIght now you know Obama's on the phone to Bill Ayers, saying, "Where the hell did you come up with that?

Problem is, no one could read (or for the audio version, listen to) more than a few pages of this drivel. It's like watching home movies: "Me, me, me. I did this. I did that. Then I went here. Then I went there..." Zzzzzzzz...

So the number one best-seller for two years is a book no one actually read. That sums up Obama right there, and how we got stuck with him.

Rusty said...

Franklin said...
Bill Ayers really did write that book, didn't he?

(I know I've got to be crazy to think that, but there you go.)



Several people did studies of word usage of the writings of both men. Everything points to Bill Ayers writing both books.

Rusty said...

Pike is yummy

I suppose it's a matter of taste, but I preferr Walleye or yellow perch. It could be that I just don't like to clean the damn things, northerns.
However pickled northern pike eggs are tres tasty.

HT said...

I eat meat. It's difficult or impossible to do so, though, after a dissection of an animal (cat) or looking at human muscle tissue. Even photos of muscle tissue. Steak, grilled, is ok. Chicken is much too similar. So when I eat it and get meat stuck between my teeth, sometimes I think it is the exact same as the cat or even the human and I get grossed out, and fearful that I'll never be able to eat meat again. But thankfully I can. It's best, soon after a dissection, to WRAP/hide the meat in something like bread or a tortilla. Otherwise, cutting chicken is difficult.

When I first had difficulty, I was thinking, damn, why can't this be a rattlesnake? I would eat that!

I would never knowingly eat a dog, certainly never in this country.

Bob_R said...

I eat meat but have never had dog, cat, or horse. I grew up on a farm and slaughtered and butchered sheep and chickens. (Lolo's method for killing a chicken is unnecessarily messy. Amateur hour. I be surprised to see a real farmer do it this way.)

I'm not attracted to eating dog, but not repulsed by it either. I'm sure my lack of attraction is purely a learned attitude. I've never been impressed by anyone trying to make a normative argument about distinguishing between the treatment of different species of animals. Eating dogs in bad. Eating cows is good. Transporting dogs in an open container is bad, transporting farm animals in an open container is good. (Don't people pay attention on the highway when you pass a truck filled with pigs? How do they think we get them from one place to another? Limos?)

As society becomes more citified I see more of the extreme anthropomorphic of animals. If its just a sort of mild affectation like a guitarist naming his guitar it's harmless and amusing. But the "dogs are people too" moralizing gets a bit scary.

Bob_R said...

anthropomorphication - sorry

David said...

My daughter and her husband live on a small farm in farm country in Wisconsin. They don't have livestock but several nearby farms do. A good percentage of their meat comes from local farms or hunting.

They made certain early that their kids know that the moo-cows, goats, piggies and chickies are killed and eaten.

The kids don't bat an eye. They love to eat the moo-cows, goats, piggies and chickies. YUm, yum.

David said...

jbrant7 said...
What strikes me about the passage is that BO may have realized that he had a Dad for the first time. Dads are here to show boys how things ARE. Moms often try to keep hard, sad things from children ("don't you think he's a little young?") Dads know chickens die to feed us. Dads know boys need to know that fact too.


BO? The dog just realized it had a dad?

Wait, no.

For the first time I just realized that the Obamas named their damned dog after Barack. Bo? Barack Obama?

I guess I'm thick to have missed it all this time, but man, that guy has to be at the center of everything!!

John henry said...

I went to school in Alexandria VA literally within sight of the White House. (As in we could see it from the schoolyard)

www.burgundyfarm.org

It was a rather progressive school, fully integrated in 1952 when I started 1st grade there. It was founded by the newsman Eric Severeid, to give you an idea of just how progressive.

It was on a farm and had lots of land. It believed in teaching us where our food came from. In 2nd grade we went to a slaughterhouse and saw how cows went from moo to steak. The entire bloody process.

In 3rd (maybe 4th) grade as a class project we raised a pig. Fed it every day before class, cleaned the pen and everything else. Then, towards the end of the year, on a Saturday, with the whole school and parents in attendance, we killed, butchered and barbecued it.

I was far less traumatized by either event than I was about 15 years ago when I had to do some work in a chicken processing plant. Perhaps grossed out is a better word than traumatized.

In addition to where food comes from, I also learned to handle and shoot a 22 rifle in 3rd grade. On the school's outdoor rifle range.

A classmate of mine, in 3rd grade, brought in a .45 caliber "Burp" gun for show and tell. Not only did the teacher not freak out, she knew how to check that it was clear before letting him pass it around.

Now there was a school.

Still there.

John Henry

rcommal said...

Bob R is an example of someone who gets the trees AND the forest. Among other things, he's honest.

John henry said...

BTW: The shooting was not an extracurricular activity. It was during regular class hours and everyone participated.

Even the girls.

John Henry

Gene said...

Franklin: Bill Ayers really did write that book, didn't he?

(I know I've got to be crazy to think that, but there you go.)


Obama's first book )Dreams From My Father) was written by someone with a good deal of literary sensitivity. His second book (Audacity of Hope) reads like a community organizer training manual.

I don't know who wrote the first one (Bill Ayers is my guess too) but it's clear the same person didn't write them both.

wyo sis said...

Lots of people have seen a chicken killed and then eaten it at a young age. I dare say all pre 1920's US presidents have seen such a thing. It's fairly common here in rural Wyoming, and I suspect it will be fairly common in many places if the price of chicken in styrofoam trays keeps going up. I hear that suburban chicken coops are catching on.
The issue of what Obama ate is not that he ate it, but that the Chicago machine (Obama version) made a huge deal about another fairly common event that happened in Romney's background involving a dog. It's an excruciatingly beautiful piece of political karma. We revel in it and that is also fairly common.

Old Patriot said...

I'm a farm boy. I've had the "privilege" of raising cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and rabbits for the table. I've also hunted squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, and a few other things, and caught more fish than I even want to remember. We also had a garden where we raised vegetables, and a handful of fruit trees. I've also done a bit of "gathering", picking blackberries huckleberries, mayhaws, and a few other things that we made jellies from. I'm glad I had those experiences. I'm trying to teach my youngest about those kinds of things, but it's difficult inside the city. The best we can do is a back yard garden. All children should learn how to feed themselves without a grocery store. they may need that information someday.

rcommal said...

Regardless of who wrote, I did read the written things, from beginning to end, from start to finish. Full stop. Both books. Way (way!) back when [then]. Before!

Having done that, it makes it hard not at all, at all to pretty much cast aside cant from all directions.

chickelit said...

I'm suddenly seeing the "cant" everywhere. I hope it's not contagious.

chickelit said...

I left out a word in my comment--sorry.

crosspatch said...

All I have to say on the subject can be summed up by this bumper sticker.

garage mahal said...

I suppose it's a matter of taste, but I preferr Walleye or yellow perch. It could be that I just don't like to clean the damn things, northerns.

Fresh perch is so much better tasting than walleye. the only time walleye fishing is remotely exciting to me is if you have the chance at a real horse. 10-12bs+ Lots of big walleyes in the Madison chain, but the small ones even taste like shit for some reason.

JAL said...

pinning it gently under one knee

Yeah. Right.

Clint said...

Are you people JUST NOW learning how to read his book?? Absolutely ridiculous.

chickelit said...

Clint said...
Are you people JUST NOW learning how to read his book?? Absolutely ridiculous.

To those who thought it important to read Obama's books--did you do so for every other recent President? If not, why not? If you read them before he was elected...did you also read other candidates book(s)? Why not?

Serious question.

Lawyer Mom said...

Eat Prey Love.

Finally the nagging "away from the table, I was introduced to dog meat" mystery is solved.

I feel so much worse.

Lawyer Mom said...

@chickenlittle, et al., I'd say "Dreams From My Father" was a liberal's coffee-table book, but someone would call me racist.

Gary Rosen said...

"Again, Romney & the Romney people appear smarter than the the two Rep 2008 candidates or the people behind McCain and Palin.

No, once she went rogue, Miss Sarah did all right for herself."

edutcher, C-fudd is freaked out not only by Palin but by vaginas, period.

el polacko said...

like so many others,i haven't read the books but i am struck by how the recently noted excerpts seem to be written by an outsider who romanticizes the rough-and-tumble of daily life in less-than-refined civilizations. a child does not see himself as outside of his environment so his later recollections would not come from an outsider's perspective.
i don't know who wrote this stuff, but it surely wasn't obama.

Carnifex said...

All this squeemishness about what you eat for supper just indicates how successful our country is in providing for us. Do you really think a hungry person cares that you had a puppy as a child? When I was growing up, we ate what we could get our hands on. Frogs, turtles, squirrels, rabbits, everything. And as kids we had a hand in skinning it, fileting it, catching it, shooting it. Hell, I caught a small snapping turtle once, and raised it the whole summer feeding it garbage. At the end of the summer we pulled him outta his box, chopped his head off and gutted him. I remember Dad taking the hatchet to his shell to open him up, and then telling me about all the different flavors in each part of the turtle(turtles have 7 different flavors in them, they don't all taste like chicken).

I know people that put squirrel brains in their scrambled eggs, and fry bass eggs for supper. I've had the luxury of turning down stuff I find unpalatable because I live in America(tongue for instance), but it's time to leave this non-topic.

I don't care what Zero ate in Asia, I don't care that he had to witness something millions of farm kids do every day. I don't care that some people find the killing of animals gross, unhealthy, anti-green, or what ever.

I care about what a fuck up he is as president of the United States. Can we get back to that?

rcommal said...

Chick: Yes, I read them, and before the 2008 election. And, yes, I do try to read candidates books, where applicable.

Rusty said...

Fresh perch is so much better tasting than walleye.

On this we can agree. Tasty perch.
I haven't fished the Madison chain-it's too urban for me. Besides there are so many places more rural just a few minutes drive away.
Now I want perch for dinner.

Saint Croix said...

Dog-gate and Trayvonamania combine in one joke that's in bad taste. So to speak.

gk1 said...

Doesn't it seem odd we are finally vetting Obama now? I mean we should have done this 5 years ago. Would have saved us a lot of grief in the long run. Now we have to brave race riots just to remove this incompetant.