This month from the DrakeGTA Archives: Cheese and government overreach!
Over the years, me and Drake disagreed on a lot of things, like the saxophone solo in Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” or Captain Kirk being superior to Picard in virtually every conceivable way.
But the one thing we typically agreed on was government overreach, particularly in schools.
My school years ended in 2005, so I didn’t get to experience most of the nonsense that parents and students are seeing in the last 15 years, like common core math, drag queen story time, or Pluto not being a planet. The most draconian thing I had to deal with was the citywide implementation of school uniforms in my freshman year of high school, and even then my school didn’t actually start to enforce it until senior year. Drake was several years older than me, so he also didn’t have to experience any of this during his school years.
But as the parent of two young girls, Drake did have to deal with the nonsense, and definitely had more knowledge of it than I did. We’ve all heard the stories about participation trophies, having to invite everyone to the birthday party, or the dreaded peanut-free zone, but unless you have a kid or work for the school most of your knowledge is secondhand. Drake on the other hand was able to give more detailed accounts of the shortcomings of the American education system, and just how invasive schools have become into the lives of students and their families. My sister is both a parent and teacher, and my good friend JR (the guy who does History With Heston right here at AJnet Magazine) is a high school teacher, so I’ve also gotten to hear plenty of horror stories from them. As shitty as my school years were, I’m grateful that I graduated when I did, and I’m glad that I don’t have any kids (that I know of), so I don’t have to deal with the schools and their invasive bullshit. Just as well, I really don’t have the patience or tolerance for that kind of thing, and you’d probably hear about me on the news being arrested for swinging on a teacher or principal.
Me and Drake would very often have discussions about school administrators exerting too much control over students and parents. These discussions usually started with something that happened at his daughters’ school, but they’d also come from sharing news articles. In the case of the post I’m about to share, it was a news article about a British child who wasn’t allowed to eat his cheese sandwich unless it had a piece of lettuce on it that provoked Drake to write this tongue-in-cheek response, titled “Don’t worry, big brother is here to save you from the dangers of cheese…”.
The article itself isn’t really written seriously, and is an example of Drake using hyperbole and humor to draw attention to something and make a point. In this case, Drake was trying to call attention to the fact that schools were becoming heavy-handed in their enforcement of policies to the point of absurdity, and humorously invoked slippery slope reasoning to make the point that parents needed to nip this in the bud immediately before it gets even further out of hand. Was he wrong? Considering that we’ve seen more and more of this sort of insanity over the years, I’d say Drake was onto something.
Anyway, this is “Don’t worry, big brother is here to save you from the dangers of cheese…”, originally posted to DrakeGTA.com on May 3, 2010.
So I’ve been following this story right? No, let me rephrase that, I’ve been trying to follow this story, but modern news sources refuse to do follow-ups unless the story is about a stupid white chick doing something stupid to mess up her own life… In which case, that’s the only story you’re going to hear about for the next six months…
So here’s the story, a kid goes to school with a cheese sandwich, the happy toddler starts to unwrap his delicious, two servings of dairy in each slice, meal, when the lunch police spot the contraband item, and take it away stating that it wasn’t “healthy enough.” What? Cheese not healthy enough? Maybe I’ve been listening to too much of that big dairy propaganda, but I thought cheese was rich in calcium, improved bone health, and something about antioxidants or freeing your radicals; and you know what, that’s not the point.
All I’m saying, when I went to school, I was lucky to have a cheese sandwich, normally I got a glass of red flavored kool-aid and a note from my mom saying that if I wasn’t such a little shit, she might love me enough to make me lunch. You know what, I made do with what I had, I would steal ketchup packets, put ketchup on my note, and eat it, while softly sobbing to myself alone in the corner.
You know what, if it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for my kids. I dare the school to step in and tell me that my kid’s lunch isn’t healthy enough, that the green spots on the bread mean it’s too old. You know what, you said you wanted green leafy vegetables, I gave you green spots, that’s like freakin’ penicillin or something.
All I’m saying if you don’t fight for your rights, you’ll loose them. Today, it’s a cheese sandwich, tomorrow they’ll have your kids eating locally grown organic tofu squares and pledging allegiance to a photo of Che Guevara. I’m so inspired that I wrote this poem…
“THEY CAME FIRST for the cheese sandwich,
and I didn’t speak up because I’m lactose intolerant.
THEN THEY CAME for the fries,
and I didn’t speak up because my doctor told me my triglyceride levels were higher than Amy Winehouse when she “fall down go boom.”
THEN THEY CAME for the white bread,
and I didn’t speak up because I really need to increase my fiber intake, I have a family history of colon cancer.
THEN THEY CAME for the red meat,
and by that time no one was left to speak up, because the whole nation had turned into granola eating yuppies.
THEN THEY FORCED us all into Obama’s socialist deathcamps where we all were all forced to have abortions and while reciting the Koran, and we all realized that Palin was right, and that somehow made it worse.”