I’d like for this column to be an illuminating, analytical illumination of the role of the presence of mid-twentieth century, commonplace American victuals as representative of leftover bourgeois sentimentalism for pseudo-capitalist, corporate socialism when manifesting in the Huxleyan dystopia that is “The World State.”
But, I haven’t read any Huxley. Everything I know about Brave New World – like all the topics slavishly researched to support my hastily-formed opinions on them – comes from the Internet. In fact, I don’t know what most of the words in that preceding paragraph mean.
I do know this: totalitarian control of a governing body over every aspect of life including technology, food, sex, clothes, travel, drugs, and blinking can’t be all bad.
One artifact of culture, in particular, could use some of that fascist muscle: the drive-in, drive-thru, backyard classic hamburger (hereafter referred to as a burger).
My whole issue with the burger, and my need for it to have some heavy-duty regulatory supervision, began just one week ago (which is more than ample time for me to form a theory on which I ramble for hours and then claim to be sacrosanct). My wife and I were wandering around Union Square and thought it was a B-E-A-utiful day for a burger. So I whipped out the trusty old iPhone – no holster yet – and found what seemed to be a reputable establishment only two blocks away: Goodburger. Perfect. We went. We ate. We left.
But we didn’t leave impressed. While they may just claim to have the “best burger in New York City,” little room is left (thanks to the hyperbolic steroid-enhanced reviews painted on the wall) to think anything other than Goodburger should be knighted and dubbed Sir-Best-Burger-in-the-Frakkin’-Universeburger.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that it wasn’t a “good” burger. It was.The problem lied in determining how good of a burger it really was, and why the NY Times, Zagat, New York Magazine, and Time Out New York were compelled to heap praises, like too many sauteed onions, onto said Goodburger. I’ve had a burger at almost every “best burger in NYC” establishment, and Goodburger is not on that list. It’s not even close. I feel like those burger reviewers haven’t even been to the other contenders and had a burger.
Anyway, after leaving Goodburger, I was confused. I mulled. I wrestled. I tried to determine why, beyond the obvious marketing ploy and newspaper payoffs, we keep calling things “good” burgers that are either just plain burgers, or not even burgers at all. I realized that we now must exalt on high a burger like those served at Goodburger because anything that resembles ground beef found between anything that hints at a bun is called “burger” nowadays. All objective burger standards are gone. If I want to call it a burger, I can call it a burger, and no one can stop me, and that needs to stop.
Much can be learned about what went wrong in the burger industry by looking closely at our current economic debacle – specifically, subprime mortgage lending. I’m no economist, nor do I play one on TV, nor have I ever studied economics, but I read a few articles on the aforementioned Internet that I think informed me of all I need to know about what was wrong with collateralized debt obligations – C.D.O.s – and how this applies to the world of beef patties on bread.
Let’s say, instead of the scores of media outlets waxing less-than-poetic about this burger or that burger being the best, there were agencies – experts in burgerdom – charged with the rating of what a restaurant would like to call a burger from AAA to AA and on down to BBB, the lowest and riskiest burger tranche. Everything that received at least an A rating would be allowed to be called a burger to the public for its purchase and enjoyment.The public would believe it had assurance that what they were buying was indeed a “burger” because of the trusty and rigorous testing processes the agencies used to determine that the product had earned the right to use the term. All those other meat sandwiches, and even some proprietors, would have to use new terminology like: McMeatWich, MeatWich King, Old Fashioned MeatWich, WhataMeatWich, Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Big Mac, and so on. (Thankfully, one MeatWich giant is gracious – and, dare I say, bold enough – not to wait for the Brave New World, and censors itself more than one would expect.)
Much like our current mortgage bond market, this meat market would rely upon the trustworthiness of the rating system. But, what would happen if securities backed by subprime loans – excuse me – if MeatWiches that normally would garner BBB ratings somehow disguised their riskiness and were presented to the rating agencies hoping to get a high bond – sorry again – burger rating, so they may use the name?
And imagine, if you can (given the seeming impossibility of this kind of thing ever, ever happening), the agencies (for reasons that are just beyond the mind of any person with a shred of common sense remaining) rating the MeatWich AAA and allowing it to be openly called “burger.” Those high up the food chain in the – um, well – food chain industry, would have complete faith in the burgerness of the items because of their faith in the rating agencies, and would proceed to sell and trade and serve them to the public – a public that doesn’t really spend time thinking about these things (unless of course you are me; then, you probably spend way too much time thinking about these things). And the public would proceed to invest their hard-earned dollars into the non-burger burger for sustenance and nutrition.
What the public should immediately notice after one bite of the “burger” is that it’s awful and should be spat out never to be purchased again. But years of trusting the system has dulled common sense and people just go with the flow. Until the unfortunate day when the truth is finally told that all along, what they thought they were eating was not in fact a burger, but a MeatWich – a term I am in the process of trademarking, so don’t even think about using it. The burger market crash and riots that would then ensue are the stuff of legend, or more accurately, the stuff of the Wall Street Journal circa September 2008. This would cause a backlash against the governing party resulting in the opposite party taking office and trying to institute more regulatory oversight of the meat market without completely taking over because of a naive belief that the burger crisis can be solved by a moderate takeover.
We have the power to avert this disaster. We have not gone too far. We don’t have to wait for the burger industry to topple like the bond market. There is still hope that with a dash of dictatorship and a smidge of fascism, the burger ship can righted.We might lose most of individual autonomy and freedom of dissent and other useless rights, but we would gain so much more. We could be living in a world where a burger by any other name is actually called something else. It’s time for the revolution to begin. Let us together make and eat this Brave New Burger.
