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Stephen Colbert: "Bro, It's Slime"



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Pink slime pellets
There's quite a bit of Pink Slime news lately, and we at La Maison Chez Nous are happy to bring it to you.

So imagine our pleasure when we discovered that Stephen Colbert had incorporated much of that news into a hilarious comedy bit. Too many good lines to pull one out (they come pretty fast near the end) — you'll just have to find them for yourselves, below.

By the way, in case you've forgotten what "Pink Slime" is, here's a taste. It's:
[T]he rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings'.
"Effluvia" just made my list of words to savor and enjoy.

Now watch and enjoy this; I'll highlight the news-news afterward. (If you want to see the video really big, click here, but you'll have to resize your window to get the ratios right.)


So the actual news:

Yesterday we covered the lobbying efforts by Beef Products Inc., one of the main producers of Pink Slime (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):
Beef Products Inc. retains a team of lobbyists from the firm Olsson, Frank & Weeda. One lobbyist employed by the firm is Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a former congresswoman from South Dakota and leader of the “Blue Dog Caucus” of pro-corporate Democrats.
We think the lobbying appears to be showing up, by the way, in the comments to Pink Slime posts on this blog. Several of our "commenters" seemed to be trolls writing from the same IP address, and quelle surprise, they were sending people to the industry sponsored web site, BeefIsBeef.com, until the Spam Mod caught them.

What's "BeefIsBeef.com" you ask? Three guesses:
A large producer of lean, finely textured beef isn’t going down without a fight in the viral social media campaign against “pink slime.” A Lubbock, Texas-based Beef Products Inc. created a response website called beefisbeef.com to offer “truth and reality” to its product, which is unappetizingly being called “pink slime.”
Hat tip to our own Mod 4 and her eagle eye.

Colbert covered the effort by three "Beefstate Governors" (Rick Perry of Texas, Terry Branstad of Iowa, and Sam Brownback of Kansas) to "end the smear campaign." In other words, to stop telling the truth, because in my kitchen, "bloody effluvia" and sinew are not "trimmings." Trimmings you can look at without gagging.

The never-disappointing GOP congressman Peter King has been taking beef money and talking Slime's praises. Think Progress:
This week, one passionate defender of pink slime emerged: Rep. Steve King (R-IA). ... [M]eat producers have also been major financial backers of King, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, throughout his political career. ...

That money appears to have been well-spent. All this week, King has been defending pink slime — or “lean finely textured beef” as he calls it — to his constituents. Indeed, in every one of the half dozen town halls that ThinkProgress attended, King talked up pink slime unprompted. In Emmetsburg, for instance, he said pink slime was actually a “supplement” and an “enhancement.” In Algona, he pledged to hold congressional hearings not into pink slime, but into the “smear campaign” against pink slime.
Careful there, cowboy. As Colbert said, "pink slime may also contain traces of smear."

And finally, the progressive campaign we talked about here (last two paragraphs) may finally be paying off. Bloomberg (h/t reddit commenter LettersFromTheSky):
AFA Foods Files Bankruptcy Citing ‘Pink Slime’ Coverage

AFA Foods, a ground-beef processor owned by Yucaipa Cos., sought bankruptcy court protection with a plan to sell some assets after media coverage of “pink slime” cut demand for its products. ... “Ongoing media attention has called into question the wholesomeness” of the meat, and has “dramatically reduced the demand for all ground beef products,” AFA interim Chief Executive Officer Ron Allen said in court papers.

Ground beef demand will soften in the next several months as consumers shift to meat that doesn’t contain the lean, finely textured beef [sic], said Ann Gurkin, an analyst for Davenport & Co. Last month, the USDA said schools in the government’s lunch program can order ground beef without the product following public pressure to remove it from cafeterias.
I hope you caught that schools "can order" beef without the Slime. That certainly sounds as though schools were being given no choice at all prior to last week.

This means, of course, that the public awareness campaign is having an effect. This is when Progressives tend to let up. Don't, say I. This one we can win:
It's not drone warfare and dead babies, but it's a perfect emblem of so much that's so wrong — and it has all the elements, a really nasty name (Pink Slime, eww) and the perfect poisonous household cleaner (deadly ammonia) as a key ingredient.

If persistent progressives can't ride this horse to victory, I'm not sure what they can do. After all, even Obama has already half-folded. Let's get the other half.
What'dya say, cowboy — care to ride this horse to victory? I warn you though; victory can be habit-forming.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
 


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