I was recently listening to the radio and heard the venerable John Clark give an update on the important news of the day. He reported that Columbus Regional Health and Healthy Communities was encouraging the Columbus City Council to ban bacon.
Banning bacon? That is going too far. Is banning bacon just the start? Are milkshakes, donuts and ranch dressing next?
Bacon brings a lot of happiness to the people of our community. Comedian Jim Gaffigan calls bacon “the most beautiful thing on Earth.” A bacon cheeseburger is not the same without bacon. A BLT is just a lettuce and tomato sandwich without bacon. No one will eat that.
Bacon makes everything better. I love the smell and sound of bacon sizzling in my kitchen. The government should not take that away from us.
My great aunt is in her 90s. She grew up on a farm and they did not have a lot of money. As a child, she usually ate some sort of pork product for breakfast. It was usually sausage gravy. Like many people in rural Indiana at that time, she was very poor. But farmers often had to rely on pork to feed their families. I usually only have a cup of coffee and a yogurt for breakfast. I would much rather have biscuits and gravy. And I will be lucky to live past 90.
I want to live in a healthy community and I know bacon is not good for me. But this is a ham-handed effort to improve our health. Consuming bacon is my choice. This is America. I am pretty sure that eating bacon is one of my constitutional rights. I think it is probably in the Ninth or 10th Amendment — somewhere in there.
It will become an act of civil disobedience to eat bacon and eggs. Is outlawing bacon the first step on the road to despotism?
This is pork prohibition. An ordinance will have a negative impact on our economy. Pork production is an important industry for Indiana. Banning bacon will only create a bacon black market. You will have to get your bacon fix from a dealer or go to an underground pork speakeasy. The markup on the contraband will be outrageous. The wealthy will hog it all.
In addition to this column, maybe I should start some sort of social media campaign to put a stop to the bacon ban. We should organize a protest. We could openly flaunt the new ordinance by dining on a few slices on the steps of city hall.
It turns out, though, that I did not hear John Clark correctly. He said “vaping” not “bacon.”
The city council was listening to the Columbus Regional Health and Healthy Communities’ suggestion to add e-cigarettes to the city’s smoke-free ordinance. Oh. Well, that is different. I support that.
Please do not call the mayor or a city councilperson to protest a proposed bacon ban. There is no such thing. Do not start leaving Onions in this newspaper about the regulation of pork products in the city. No one in Columbus is considering a bacon ban. I completely misunderstood the news.
But I did not let that stop me from going off half-cocked. I escalated things all out of proportion. I was sure that I was right and that I should offer my opinion even if I was clueless about the reality of the situation.
I was offended and outraged without having all of the information or the context. I was too pigheaded to learn more. I did not let my ignorance stop me from providing disinformation and spreading ridiculous notions. I am sure that I am the only ill-informed person who has or ever will assert their political opinions without having all the facts — when pigs fly.
