Gettin’ my potatoes, yeah! Oh yeah!
Fresh mashed potatoes, yeah!
Ha, well, come on and do it, ha
Say it!
The American goldfinch subsists primarily on seeds.
Some people call this plump passerine seedeater a “potato chip bird” based on how they hear its chirruping.
These ornithological factoids segue naturally into an analysis of, frankly and with no exaggeration, the greatest controversy ever manufactured by a federal bureaucracy anywhere at any time.
Readers, steel yourselves. Parents, block this content from your children. All people of goodwill, contemplate what led humankind to teeter on the edge of this dizzying precipice.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture may reclassify potatoes as grains instead of vegetables.1No one covers the potato business like, um, potatobusiness-dot-com. What in the name of Mendel’s pea pods?!
*waits three days for lull in rioting*
Your substitute Weekend Politics Thread header host jests while Carl Lineaus gently weeps because changing the regulatory status of Solanum tuberosum seems inconsequential. Can it matter whether one says puh-TAH-toe? In a single word, you bet your ass it will.2Counts mentally; plows ahead unperturbed. May the Devil take the first who dares to call this whole thing off.
Pencil pushers3Cursor draggers? would muscle out botanists when it comes to the major task of finalizing the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which may deemphasize grain consumption. Those guidelines will, in turn, drive policy for school meal and governmental food assistance programs. Inspection regimes, tax code provisions, crop insurance policies, textbooks, and product labeling will also require revisions.
Older Politicados living in the United States may flash back to the foofaraw stirred by certain unserious people in the Reagan administration trying to have catsup/ketchup4Choose your warrior! declared a vegetable. Embracing that concept would have slashed billions from Department of Education payments to public schools and, even more importantly to the Reaganites, edge nonaffluent, largely nonwhite children closer to the edge of becoming malnourished.
Removing potatoes as a vegetarian option would work in reverse, committing additional federal funds to K-12 education and making cafeteria menus more nutritious. Economic impacts on leading potato-growing states like Maine and Idaho remain uncalculated. Your largely innumerate WPT thread writer bets on a wash with higher transfer payments cancelling out lower sales revenues.
Anyway, to steal a line from Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin, CBE, ag words say so much.
One,5Meaning Uvular. Readers who endured the header until can scroll down to the comments with clear consciences. however, must still grapple with the question of whether calling a potato a grain makes sense.
Pay no attention to Derrida entering the ring to bash Wittgenstein and Quine with a steel chair one might as readily refer to as a wet fish. Settle instead into the Foucauldian or Borgesian mindset that words fix identity, use, and relationships. Rather than intrinsic, self-suggesting attributes, names for objects evolve practically. Humans apply appellations like physical handles, with names attaching most strongly when they permit the best use, greatest manipulation, or finest control—usually a combination of all three. Consider, for instance, how “phlogiston provides” a perfectly cromulent explanation for why things burn while “oxidation” opens up a universe of chemistry.
A-directly political example involves discussing “undocumented immigrants” instead of “illegal immigrants.” Which designation depicts individuals as regular human beings who just happened to cross a line on map rather than inherently criminal and justly jailable? Think, too, how a government could solve the problem of some people lacking certain documents. Because all evidence indicates elected officials will not.
Taking an instrumental view of language eases us into a world where the larger category of grains, almost perforce, incorporates potatoes. In practice, mashing grains, adding yeast, and heating the dosed liquid produces clear, flavorless alcohol. Milling grains yields flour. Plants form grains when they go to seed, and those seeds sprout to release their germ.
Vodka, potato rolls, and taters with eyes. Check, check and check.
Add the final proof that birds quite enjoy snacking on mashed potatoes, and this WPT comes full circle in backing the USDA’s coup de grass.6Grass, a grain. Get it? Heh.
