If only Professor Gates had had the foresight to print up FREE SKIP! T-shirts before he was carted off in cuffs! He could have a nice little sideline right now, freeing him from the necessity of facing down Larry “Obsidian Oblivion” Elder in the Cambridge Community College Clam CHOW-dah Challenge.

Opportunities wasted, dreams deferred. Liberty weeps.

There is no more disgusting display of all that is wrong with our country and our society, barring torture, war and ignorance, than this orgy of gluttony.

I wrote about this “contest” back in the middle of the aughts in a sports column. First, it’s not sport. Second, it’s absurdly disgusting. Third, it’s not sport and fourth it’s disgusting.

Watching people shovel food into their gaping maws as quickly as they can pretty much sums up America—we have too much of everything so we glut, and eat, and make pigs of ourselves all the while shouting about our “liberty” and “freedom.”

One thing our nation has in spades are citizens willing to engage in the most base ways and wrap it all up in red, white and blue.

Humboldt, when I hear the phrase “American Exceptionalism,” this is what I always see in my head.

Well…this, wrestling and monster truck shows. When it comes to stupidity, waste and indulgent excess, we have no equal as a nation.

So, what, they wouldn’t let him stuff hot dogs down his craw for the prize and he protested and they found this worthy of handcuffs? 

YAY, living in AMURIKA!!  I’m so proud.