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Here are the final two ¶ from an op-ed in today's W$J - Chicagoosed, by Joseph Epstein
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Now that foie gras has been banned from Chicago --
the production and sale of it in California is also to end in 2012 --
the way is clear for banning other meats. My own guess for the next
banned meat would be veal. The slaughtering of calves to yield veal has
long been an object of moral consternation on the part of the
tender-hearted. From there pork might next target of the troops of
virtue, for pigs, I not long ago read, are more intelligent than
horses. After pork, one can see a general ban on all kinds of sausage.
Mencken once referred to hot dogs as cartridges "filled with all the
sweepings of the abattoir floor." Butchers, like teachers of
Marxism-Leninism after the fall of Communism in Russia, are likely to
be rendered supernumerary. And then how long will it be before the
government issues a study showing the baleful effects of secondary
cholesterol, the results of which will be to force people to eat
hamburgers and all other meats, as others may now smoke cigarettes,
only out of doors?
A Chicago alderman named Joe Moore, who sponsored the ban on foie gras,
after its passage declared that it sends "a powerful message that we
[in Chicago] uphold the value of a civilized society." All too easily
can I hear one of the red-faced, pot-bellied Chicago aldermen of my
youth, reply, "What's he, [epithet deleted] nuts!?"
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