(ThyBlackMan.com) It’s a month for the letter “P,” as in, “The president is preparing to get pitched out of public housing and is proffering preemptive pardons to his progeny.”
Or, for a more proper association, the simple word “pork.”
Oh, sure, my country wallows in a perfect Third World purgatory, but McDonald‘s brought back the McRib sandwich yesterday.
Can I really punt an election whose results are still presumptive, plus ignore a pandemic, in favor of a focus on the McRib sandwich?
Yes, and I promise to stop being cutesy with all the “P’s.”
One of the things I’ve really admired about my nation during this preposterous period (OK, one more) is that, no matter how bad things got, I could still get fast-food somewhere.
I remember on one of the early days of the pandemic, I drove to work with a mask to put on if I left the car, a bottle of sanitizer on the seat next to me and a letter from my boss in the glove compartment saying I was an “essential employee.” I’m a talk radio host, so the letter was unintentionally hilarious.
Because so many people were off work, out of work or working from home, traffic was down to a Sunday morning sputter. In the strip mall nearest to the radio station, the gym and the pizza place were closed, and a Soviet-era line of people waited to get into the grocery store.
There were two cars in line at the fast-food place. Mine was the second. I got a bacon, egg and cheese on a biscuit. The woman in the window, who was in her fifties, called me “honey” when I thanked her for being at work. I ate the sandwich in the parking lot of the station, and then masked up, and then rumbled in for another shift of causing trouble.
The McRib sandwich is the most timid of all fast-food meals. You don’t just “go get” a McRib. You hunt a McRib. Is that one over there, peeking shyly through the untrimmed grass just past the McDonald’s parking lot, out there in the wild where the landscapers fear to tread? Walk softly or it will flee!
Some of you may be wealthy, or have good taste, or give a damn about your health, so I might as well explain that a McRib sandwich is a slab of heavily processed pig meat ground up and shaped into a small rack of ribs. A particularly insipid barbecue sauce is slathered on it, pickles and onions are added, and it’s served on a bun.
It’s horrible food, loaded with salt and weird chemical additives. It is not ironic, nor is it “artisanal.” I love the damn things.
McDonald’s doesn’t serve it all the time. McDonald’s goes years without offering the McRib.
And when they bring it back for a period of time, the company takes out radio and television ads.
But they don’t have to take out ads. Somehow, the McRib hunters always know before the ads start appearing.
A woman who works at McDonald’s tells her boyfriend that the McRib will be back next month, and he tells one of the guys he works with and, soon, the news reaches the ear of an old, grizzled hunter, a man who has tracked the McRib from the South Pole to the steaming jungles of Africa.
And we are there in our cargo shorts and our Harley Davidson T-shirts, in our $1,500 dark-blue suits and, if need be, in our parkas.
I believe in the rhythms of nature, in the tide-shifting glance of God. I believe in signs and omens.
As Pres. Donald Trump prepares to leave, the McRib comes back to us on the wings of a dove, or at least on the wings of a pig. It’s a sign. The old hunters know.
Written by Marc Munroe Dion
Official website; https://twitter.com/marcmdion
