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Stand Up To The Nanny State! (Rush On The Anti-Food Police Backlash)
RushLimbaugh.com ^ | 12/16/04 | Rush Limbaugh

Posted on 12/16/2004 7:06:40 PM PST by goldstategop

I just love this story. "The parent of the Carl's, Jr...." I've got to tell you a little story. When I first moved to Sacramento back in 1984 I took the southern route when I drove out there from Kansas City. People said, because I was going in October, "Yeah you want to take the southern route because you go the northern route you get snow. You don't want to go I-80 and all that because if you go out to the Sierra you might get snow, so take the southern route. Go into New Mexico and Arizona and southern California and drive I-5 up the state." So I did that and I got snow in Flagstaff, snow in Arizona, and snow in a lot of places. But when I got to California -- and I had never been. Well, I'd been there earlier that year for the Democratic convention in San Francisco, but I flew in there and stayed at a seedy hotel in a rotten part of town because we decided to go late. It was really rank, and we were in Kansas City. We were the morning show so I had to get up at two in the morning California time, so we were basically going back and forth to convention hall and this sort of stuff.

I didn't see much is the point, except a seedy hotel. Most seedy hotels even have a nice lobby, but not this place. At any rate, when I'm driving up I-5 and going through all these little communities, I saw a place called Carl's Jr. I never heard of it. So when I got to Sacramento I asked the program director at the radio station -- a consultant, who was a big lib from San Francisco, he's a great guy, a friend of mine -- I said, "What is this Carl's Jr.?" He said, "You don't want to go there. Avoid Carl's Jr. at all costs." Why? "Big contributor to right-wing causes." So that was my first experience with Carl's Jr. and so they're in the news here again.

(story) "The parent of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burger chains is cashing in on consumer backlash against healthier fast-food fare with new premium burgers that make Big Macs look like rabbit food. While many of its competitors have downplayed traditional burgers in the last two years while scrambling to add lower-fat salads and grilled chicken offerings to their menus, CKE Restaurants Inc. has taken a different approach. Carl's Jr. on Wednesday introduced the Breakfast Burger, a hamburger topped with a fried egg, hash browns, bacon and cheese, that weighs in at 830 calories and 46 grams of fat. Hardee's, meanwhile, last month added the Monster Thickburger to its menu. With two one-third-pound beef patties, four strips of bacon, and three slices of cheese, the burger has 1,417 calories and a whopping 107 grams of fat. McDonald's Corp.'s Big Mac, with 560 calories and 30 grams of fat, doesn't even come close. 'Obviously, the health of its customers is not one of Hardee's top priorities,' said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. The Monster Thickburger has hit a nerve with consumers weary of so-called 'food police,' said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing at Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. 'We don't make what we want to sell, we make what people want to buy,' Haley said in an interview. 'There is sort of a backlash against political correctness in food.'"

Good! I for one love it. I'm sick and tired of these health freak Nazis preaching to everybody else what they can and can't eat, should and shouldn't eat, it's none of their business! If they want to eat watercress vinaigrette salad dressing poured on a bunch of chestnuts let 'em do it, and let them open restaurants thinking they can profit selling that rotgut, and people want this. I'm happy. I like this standing up to these little nannies, I do, folks. I love standing up to these purest little pencil-neck geek freaks sitting out there claiming to live the perfect life, claiming to know everything everybody ought to do and then having the audacity to tell everybody what they ought to do and meddle, and then try to get involved in the private sector and tell these places what they should sell if it means going out of business, which it did mean in Berkeley. Get this. This goes back some years ago, but it was a Burger King in Berkeley. Burger King sells what? Burgers! Well, the people in Berkeley didn't like that, so they wanted two additions to the menu.

They wanted fat-free burgers, those veggie burger things. You ever eaten one of those? Yeah, Snerdley, if you happen to like cardboard go ahead and eat it, but don't force it on everybody else. Snerdley doesn't do that. But nevertheless they wanted these veggie burgers in there. I mean, they're okay, but that's not what Burger King's in business to sell -- and they wanted some sort of grilled chicken. So Burger King, I mean, you get this city council at Berkeley raising hell and threatening to torch your place or whatever, kick you out of town. So they put the stuff on the menu, and these damn little Nimrods that demanded it never patronize the place. So these little yellow-bellied sap suckers out there demanded all this health food in a Burger King of all places then never went, and so the Burger King, I forget what happened to it. Either it closed without a business or they broomed those menu items after the hubbub had passed, but I liked this Hardee's examine Carl's Jr. business.

Screw you! Screw you. If that's what our customers want to eat, by God it's what's going to be on our menu. They want to eat this stuff, fine. You know, I just absolutely love the story. I think it's absolutely ridiculous for people to go into a restaurant and feel guilty because of what they order. It's sort of like people who worry about driving their car because they might be creating global warming. They created all this guilt that they want to transfer to every one of us. They want us all walking around thinking we're guilty of something. We're guilty of horrible nutrition -- and, in fact, if we eat what we want we're destroying the rain forest, and we're denying the poor of the world the pristine beauty of their habitat. Well, let me tell you the truth about it. The truth is, if you go to Africa, they want to be able to farm use and their land to develop food but the environmentalist wackos in this country say, "Oh, no, you can't! That's a pristine habitat. You can't touch it," and so they are starving. There is a food shortage problem in Africa because western rich environmentalist wacko elitists are deigning to tell them what they can and can't do with land that they don't even own, and they're not happy about it.

So I'm all for these backlashes. You may remember, back in the early days of this show when McDonald's first came under attack, I would is a Lo Bianco over there -- or one of the Snerdley brothers, Mario Snerdley -- I would send Mario Snerdley to the nearest McDonald's over on 8th Avenue and have him buy 250 Big Macs. When the Big Mac first came under assault, it was the global warming crowd worried about the fact that the food for these cows that the cows had to eat, they were eating rain forest stuff or whatever it was. Yeah, trees were being chopped down to make way for grazing for the cows, the steers who were eventually going to become Big Macs. So I stood in solidarity with McDonald's back then and we'd send Mario Snerdley over there. (interruption) No, they weren't all eaten, that wasn't the point. The point was to defend McDonald's -- and we did that two or three times. It was fun. I mean, he'd take a cell phone over there and he'd be on the air telling us what he was doing. We'd hear him on the air: "I want 250 Big Mac's, 150 small fries, 100 large fries," and you could hear these people on the other side of the counter going nuts trying to figure out how to fill the order, but they did, and Snerdley brought them back in I don't know how many snacks and they sat there in the WABC newsroom -- and, of course, everybody dug in. Everybody dug in. I think we even did that around Thanksgiving once just for the fun of it.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: California; US: Tennessee
KEYWORDS: backlash; breakfastburger; bringiton; california; carljr; carlsjr; ckerestaurants; csipi; cyberburger; foodpolice; freedom; hardees; michaeljacobsen; minimumwage; nannystate; rushlimgaugh; supersizedburgers; tennessee; thickburgers
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To: Blurblogger
I was so shocked by the commercial I had to watch it again:

http://www.hardeesgirl.com/commercial.html

Hardee's bull rider

21 posted on 12/16/2004 8:05:29 PM PST by KarlInOhio (In a just world, Arafat would have died at the end of a rope.)
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To: Graybeard58

God Bless our troops....Until Then.....
http://www.clermontyellowribbon.com/multimedia.htm


22 posted on 12/16/2004 8:13:52 PM PST by Marshall1
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To: KarlInOhio
(good-naturedly blushes, coughs nervously, averts eyes trying to avoid lust) and still thinking this burgercheesecake stuff does not lift society but rather degrades....
23 posted on 12/16/2004 8:16:13 PM PST by The Spirit Of Allegiance (FREE people needn't apply to a Government of/by/for the People for a gun (PERSONAL PROPERTY) permit!)
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To: Arkinsaw

"I used to like Chili's. They had a Rojo burger that was a cheeseburger with all this barbecue sauce on it. They stopped making that and their menu is slowing turning into all this stuff with chicken breasts and romaine lettuce, pineapple bits, and pita bread. I stopped going there at all."

I don't know. I was just at a Chili's here in Texas the other night.

They've got about 6 different burgers on the menu, ribs, fried chicken strips and fingers, queso and chips.

Good fattening stuff!!


24 posted on 12/16/2004 8:17:48 PM PST by chaosagent (It's all right to be crazy. Just don't let it drive you nuts.)
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To: KarlInOhio

A supermodel with a fat burger suggestively seated on a mechanical bull. Food Porn! (laughing)


25 posted on 12/16/2004 8:18:37 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: Blurblogger
their half-time ad showed a sexy girl much too provocatively for prime time on a mechanical bull....

Bah. I've seen far more risque stuff at the Iowa State Fair.

26 posted on 12/17/2004 12:40:06 AM PST by Prime Choice (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! ...And if you can't be good, be careful.)
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To: Prime Choice

"I've seen far more risque stuff at the Iowa State Fair"

I would maintain the position that...that bull constitutes...in more ways than one...a very slippery slope....


27 posted on 12/17/2004 3:19:10 AM PST by The Spirit Of Allegiance (Ask yourself: WWJJD? What would Jesse Jackson do if he were a Conservative? Then DO IT!)
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