The Remedy for America’s Woes: Eat More Hamburgers!

Photo by Marshall Astor, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

“Nightline” recently took a break from covering important stories like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Barack Obama’s cabinet appointees and the Bush Administration’s quiet attempt to roll back a legion of environmental laws. Instead, they gave some quality airtime to the hamburger. Yes, the hamburger. More specifically, “Nightline”—one of America’s most august news shows—did a “news” segment based on this hypothesis: in correspondent John Berman’s words, “everything seems to be failing in America right now ... except for the burger.” The hamburger, apparently, is the recession’s filet mignon. Everyone’s eating hamburgers now. And to get to the bottom of this mystery, they turned to Josh “the feedbag” Ozersky, citysearch.com restaurant editor, professional hamburger eater and future candidate for coronary bypass surgery.

The hamburger “will always boom because the burger is omnipotent and irresistible,” Ozersky says to Berman between bites of their “omnipotent” $17 hamburgers at the Spotted Pig in New York’s West Village. “It can never be weakened. It can never be slowed down.” Ozersky’s inflated proclivity for hamburger hyperbole didn’t stop there, however. He adds: “For Americans to turn away from the hamburger would be to abrogate everything that makes us American or even human” (my italics).

Uh, OK. But the news item wasn’t all fluff and exaggeration about the hamburger’s role in the current economic downturn. There was also bad advice. When asked how he’d advise Barack Obama with turning the economy around, Ozerksy gives us one word: “Hamburger-ize.” Fortunately, there’s now someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with enough of a brain to sort through this visual junk food and, let’s hope, change the channel.

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