Bacon and Beans Revisited

That was then: We hold the distinction of being the first nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poorhouse in an automobile. We been so busy in the last few years getting radios and bathtubs and facial creams and straight eights that we forgot to see if we had any bacon or beans.---Will Rogers, 1931.

This is now, if you believe about half of what you read or hear: We hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poorhouse in two cars. Some of those cars have television sets in them, yet. And half of those cars still manage to attract attention from those always ready to tell us what business we don't have driving them. That is, when they aren't telling us what right we don't have driving them.

Either we're depressing the local economy by helping to block new mass transit routes and jobs; or, we're making the world further unsafe for plant and animal life no one's ever heard of and fewer would miss if and when extinct. It's still a tossup.

And if you still believe about half of what you read or hear, we also hold the distinction, now, of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poorhouse on a choice of fifteen or twenty airlines two-thirds of which didn't exist fifteen or twenty years ago. Not to mention with the Internet at home or on portable computers that not four decades earlier lots of people thought would be, if they came at all, evidence of some new plot---Communist, capitalist, My Favourite Martian. A plot to destroy what was left of nobody really knew precisely what, of course. But it was going to be destroyed, by jingo, if the computer was allowed anywhere beyond five feet off the property line at the cheeseball sci-fi B-film studio.

As for the bacon or beans, forget it. We've been told for so many years that they're going to kill us with cancer that forgetting them means nothing. Besides, whatever we're not eating on our way to the poorhouse today, there'll be someone ready at all times to tell us we have no business eating it, anyway. That is, when they aren't telling us we have no right to eat it.