Milk 2012
Posted on by Alyssa
The political jabs are flying from candidates, news channels, and Facebook accounts. How about cooling it down a little and looking at the role of milk in the United States? Who knows, we may even begin wishing there was a Dairy Party listed on the ballot.
Milk’s most recent political appearance was during President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address (which is no insignificant feat). Unfortunately, it was the subject of a joke that fell rather flat; it seems there was a silly rule in place treating milk spills as equivalent to oil spills, and the President couldn’t help but say it really was worth “crying over spilled milk.”
Beyond the requisite clichés, milk (and the price of it) always seems to work its way into questions to the candidates. A candidate’s knowledge of the averages prices of American homes’ staple foods like milk and bread is almost always used as a way to gauge his or her familiarity with the nation’s domestic problems. (For the record, it’s about $3.47 a gallon right now.)
Lest the unfortunate dairy-related comments appear to belong solely to the realm of President Obama, we’ll remember an event at a VA Hospital when Mitt Romney asked if there was anything they needed. The reply was simple: milk. Alas, Romney replied with a comment about learning how to milk cows and then left. The next day, however, Romney had 7,000 pints of milk delivered to the hospital. There must have been a multitude of milk mustaches that day.
Other than those two instances, our favorite creamy white drink seems to favor keeping a low profile when it comes to politics (other than the occasional raw milk rally), and it’s probably wise—no matter our political persuasion, we could all do with a bit more milk.
Cartoon credit to Grondahl, Standard Examiner, Oct. 19, 2012
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Samantha says:
