BREAKING: Every time a box of Meuslix is sold...!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2018

Chuck Todd earns his wings: We've fallen into several "time passages" around here of late.

In a previous post, we reported the time passage into which we tumbled upon rereading Norman Malcolm's Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir after perhaps forty years. Yesterday, along came Chuck Todd!

Chuck's work has been better and better on MTP Daily. Yesterday, though, he came into his own, thoughtfully offering this (emphasis at the end):

TODD (11/16/18): Welcome back. Tonight I'm obsessed with America's elections because they're apparently part of a complete breakfast.

In that interview with The Daily Caller we mentioned earlier, President Trump called for more voter I.D. laws in this country, saying, "if you buy a box of cereal, you have a voter I.D."

So the president apparently thinks you need identification to buy breakfast cereal, which is honey bunches of nonsense. But honestly, if you think about it, perhaps we can really should I.D. people if they are going to buy cereal.

To misquote Hunter S. Thompson, the cereal aisle is a cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the supermarket. A long plastic hallway where Cheerios and marshmallows run free. Who knows what could be inside those boxes? Is it even from natural ingredients?

Grape Nuts. Can Grape Nuts be fermented and turned into Wine Nuts? By the way, you need an I.D. to buy alcohol. Did you ever notice there are no grapes or nuts in that?

Shredded Wheat. So violent, gruesome. Shouldn't it be rated "M" for mature? Shredded wheat. And who knows what makes Special K so special. What aren't they telling us?

Maybe they should check I.D.s to see who is buying this stuff. Why stop there? How about tuna fish with its practically endless shelf life? Are people stockpiling it? Maybe we should keep track of the people that buy too much tuna fish.

Why? Do they know something we don't? Is it in their bunkers with vinegar and baking soda, the ingredients to homemade volcanoes? The foamy unfathomable horror of pre-washed salad. How do you wash salad before you wash the salad? All very suspicious.

So I say let's check I.D.s for everything at the grocery store. People will fall in line as long as it's 10 items or less.

By the way, big shout-out to my old friend Bob Somerby, the best cereal jokes known to man. It's Just Right.

Maybe a year ago, we received word that Chuck has been asking around to see if people remembered the words to our old Meuslix jokes. Basic premise: You get stuck, while playing Scrabble, with an unplayed 7-letter word. Who knew it was even a word?

Or words to that effect. We knew it by heart way back when.

Darn it all! Do you know how many old friends you have to recuse yourself from when you embark on a pointless project like this? How many years has it been since we bar-hopped with Matthews and Dowd?

Chuck is a very good guy; we go all the way back to the old Hotline days. But then, as we've often noted, the world is full of good, decent people. For the record, the Just Right joke goes something like this:

You hold up two different varieties of Just Right. Then, after the proper set-up, you skillfully say, with exasperation, "One of them has to be partially wrong!"

Can't quite recall the way that went. We've plainly been at this too long.

Very-special bonus presentation: We're not sure that Chuck (along with everyone else) got it right concerning what Trump so masterfully said. We suspect he likely meant this:

They're so lax about ID that if you just show them a cereal box, they'll happily wave you along.

We suspect that's what he meant. Where we vote, up Baltimore way, they ask for no ID at all.