Bull Hockey and The Reverend Jackson
Last Saturday was the 5th Annual D.C. Testicle Festival sponsored by the Montana State Society. The event was in Arlington, Virginia, and once again just a little too far for me to travel for a four-hour event on a busy summer Saturday.
The event was full of good ‘ole boys who left the farms and ranches of the great American west to work on Capitol Hill. Most will do their time, then saddle up a jet and retreat back to God’s Country, away from the urban jungles of the east.
Being a proud member of a national agriculture fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho, University of Maryland Chapter, the idea of bovine testes as a hors d’ouver with beer and Crown Royal is not unheard of as an occasional treat.
On the farm, or out on the ranch, food is – just food, with few connotations being attached. Plenty of folks within Maryland’s Ag community have had this particular treat both chicken-fried and mixed in with their scrambled eggs.
By this point you are either grossed out and have stopped reading, or you are hungrily wondering where this is leading.
Last week, just a few days before the D.C. Festival, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, not realizing he was being taped and near an open microphone said his “pal,” Sen. Barack Obama, is: “talking down to Black people.” The Reverend Jackson continued further and stated: “I want to cut his nuts off.”
Only someone as wildly flagrant as the Reverend Jackson would have gotten away with such a statement about Barack Obama. It was a “mistake,” a “blip,” in the press for the colorful and very animated Jesse Jackson.
The Reverend Jackson later apologized, saying he was “very sorry” for his testicular comments about Senator Obama, calling them “a side light in a broader conversation about urban disparities.” Well, perhaps, and perhaps not; it looked and sounded like Jesse was just plain upset when I watched the video.
We all get upset about things in the political world. No one agrees all of the time with his or her chosen candidate. Why should we expect Jesse Jackson to be different?
The reason we should expect more is because the Reverend Jackson is a Democrat Party leader, someone who others emulate and follow. He needs to be setting positive examples, not making reckless statements out of fits of frustration.
In the agricultural world, castration is a very serious business. It is done by a veterinarian and is used to control reproduction, aggression, and to increase growth and weight of male animals. The Reverend Jackson should know that the meat from a capon, barrow, lapin or steer is tastier than their fully functional male counter-parts.
Thankfully, he was in urban Chicago at the time of the interview. Such a comment in Butte or Missoula would have cut a just little deeper because there they understand explicitly.
|
