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Sunday, February 3, 2008

Headline of the Day

posted by on February 3 at 20:09 PM

Inhaling Pig Brains May Be Cause of New Illness.

The story’s actually kind of scary. And sad. Next time some Republican claims illegal immigrants are taking away jobs Americans citizens truly want, I urge you to cite “microscopic flecks of pig brain.”

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1

On the other hand, the Stranger's Food writers have prepared for you a rhapsody of artful prose in splendorous praise of the many-faceted pleasures of well-prepared animal flesh. Why not eat some today?

Posted by elenchos | February 3, 2008 8:17 PM
2

But you get really high doing it. Those brains are a wonder drug I swear.

Posted by ZWBush | February 3, 2008 8:18 PM
3

Those kooky kids--what will they think up next?

Posted by NapoleonXIV | February 3, 2008 8:32 PM
4

Hey, there are tons of Americans willing to be paid a few bucks a day to inhale pigs brains.

Posted by Giffy | February 3, 2008 8:35 PM
5

I really have no idea what to say about this story. I cannot think of anything witty regarding pigs brains and inhalation.

Posted by Kristin Bell | February 3, 2008 9:13 PM
6

I can't keep up with slog or the news. There are just too many articles to read! I feel like I'm buried in information! Help!

Posted by Kristin Bell | February 3, 2008 9:19 PM
7

face masks which cover the mouth and nose might be a good start...you know, like people wear in other occupations.

Posted by ellarosa | February 3, 2008 9:54 PM
8

Back in the eighties I was in a punk band called "Microscopic Flecks of Pig Brain". No, really I was.

Posted by Fnarf | February 3, 2008 9:55 PM
9

Immigration for the win.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | February 3, 2008 9:59 PM
10
Next time some Republican claims illegal immigrants are taking away jobs Americans citizens truly want, I urge you to cite “microscopic flecks of pig brain.”

That's a bullshit argument.

Nobody wants those jobs, anymore than anyone wants the jobs cleaning toilets in fucking hotels. But some people have to take them, and those people generally prefer to be competing with others who aren't living under the constant threat of being thrown out of the fucking country. Because, see, that puts downward pressure on wages in the toilet-cleaning and pig-brain-inhaling job markets. Next thing you know, the shitty job you didn't want in the first place doesn't even pay enough to live on -- and neither does the dish washing job or the fruit picking job or the prep cook job or the ditch digging job or any of the other shitty jobs you didn't want but had to ask for -- because they're all being done by people who are working outside U.S. labor laws, and dipshits like you are advocating to allow these people to be used as, essentially, a slave labor force because, in your tiny mind, exploited brown people are sadder than exploited white people, so you want the brown people to have the right to stay in the country and keep getting fucked -- and, consequently, providing you with cheap tomatoes and clean toilets.

As far as that goes, most bottom-rung service industry types would like nothing better than to see the illegal immigrants currently in the country get citizenship, because wages for shitty jobs might finally go up.

But then the new Latino American citizens would just be economically displaced by the next wave of 11 million wetbacks who come in to fill the demand for under-market labor. And you'd probably be standing around advocating for the rights of those poor exploited immigrants, because they rank higher on your pity scale. And why should you give a fuck what all that does to wages in the pig-brain-inhaling job market anyway? You'll never have to compete there because you're so fucking smart.

That must be nice.

Carry on.

Posted by Judah | February 3, 2008 11:22 PM
11

Morning news, please. Cough.

Posted by Mr. Poe | February 4, 2008 7:45 AM
12

Judah is right.

Annie, generally speaking, no one wants to do a job for free, right? If an employer is only willing to pay zero for a job, then it will be a job that no one wants. Raise the pay a little bit, and it will still be one of those "jobs Americans don't want". Raise the pay some more, and Americans will want that job. Raise it enough, and we'll be lined up around the block trying to get the job.

If farm hands, dishwashers, and pig-brain-huffing meat packers were paid $50,000, don't you think there would be plenty of Americans willing to do the work? Sure, we'd either have less profit for businesses or we'd pay higher prices for our food, but at least we'd know that by purchasing the food, we were not supporting a system that relies on hiring people who have little other choice than to sneak in and work for poverty-level wages.

Why must we assume that employers get to say what a job is worth and set the price? It's just a trade -- money for labor. If no laborers want to trade for your money, you're not offering enough.

I'd shovel shit for $100/hour. Probably for a lot less than that.

Why do so many of us think that an employer should be allowed to dip into the black market if he is offering so little in exchange for the labor he wants to purchase that he cannot attract legal workers? Turn it around -- if a worker asks for so much money that no employer wants to hire him (or offers so little labor for a given amount of money), should he be allowed to cheat the system in order to get what he wants? Of course not.

It's shameful that we allow our system of food production and packaging to rely upon and maintain this system of black market labor.

Posted by Phil M | February 4, 2008 8:02 AM
13

@10 and @12, But having immigrants do creates a win/win. Employers can pay less for wages, prices are kept down, and people are given jobs. Are they great high paying jobs, nope, but they are better jobs then they would have had back home.

Remember people are coming freely to this country to work, they are not forced to come, nor are they (usually) held here against there will. They come because the work here is better then were they come from, and so their kids can have a better shot.

We do need to ensure that work place safety laws are being followed, and some level of minimum wages adhered to, though. But to say that employers should just pay more ignores economic reality. If US pig producers paid the level of wages American's would demand, assuming there were enough Americans to the jobs of 11 million more people, prices would be much higher.

Pigs aren't just found in the US, so there is plenty of competition from other countries, offering pork products at much lower prices. the end result is no pig jobs for anyone and no more pig farmers.

Posted by Giffy | February 4, 2008 8:41 AM
14

giffy, shut up! you'll just encourage people to want to protect pig jobs through subsidies and tarrifs!

Posted by Bellevue Ave | February 4, 2008 8:58 AM
15

This is reason like 1092189021 that I'm so glad I don't eat meat. I contribute to lots of other awful stuff with my modern American lifestyle, but I don't contribute to microscope flecks of pig brains.

Posted by exelizabeth | February 4, 2008 9:06 AM
16
But to say that employers should just pay more ignores economic reality.

You know what ignores economic reality? The notion that you can cut costs by cutting wages and still expect to sustain profit growth. Because cutting wages in any sector of the economy will, over time, force prices down by reducing the retail purchasing power of consumers either in your immediate consumer market or in secondary consumer markets: unemployed rednecks purchase fewer cars, which will result in fewer car sales people taking vacations in your nice hotels, so now the money you thought you were saving by hiring illegal immigrants instead of rednecks is actually being taken out of your profits.

Furthermore, cutting wages by hiring immigrants who spend a significant amount of money in foreign countries creates what amounts to a trade deficit.

Pigs do exist in other parts of the world, and other people in other places will slaughter them for less than American workers. But those people don't consume nearly as many goods as American workers. Sending that money overseas to purchase goods from people who don't buy-- and therefore don't demand the wages necessary to pay for --televisions and DVD players will ultimately reduce the profits of companies that manufacture and sell televisions and DVD players. In the long run, this will result in a global economic slowdown, as consumers in industrialized countries bury themselves in debt to maintain their lifestyles in the face of a massive and sustained wage drain.

A global economic slowdown -- pretty much exactly like the one we're experiencing right now.

If you want to bring up "economic reality", maybe you should learn something about it.

Posted by Judah | February 4, 2008 9:12 AM
17

150 years ago both Annie and Giffy would have been arguing that if slavery was abolished that the price of cotton clothing and tobacco would increase and that after all, those negros had it better over here in America than they ever did in Africa.

Posted by wile_e_quixote | February 4, 2008 9:56 AM
18

Oh, and if Giffy had bothered to read the linked article he might have come across this:


One of the steps in that part of the operation involves removing the pigs' brains with compressed air forced into the skull through the hole where the spinal cord enters. The brains are then packed and sent to markets in Korea and China as food.


So we have illegal immigrants working in American slaughterhouses and destroying their health so we can export pig brains to Korea and China. It's so nice to see people like Giffy and Annie making the case that lowering our labor standards to those of the third world is a good thing.

Posted by wile_e_quixote | February 4, 2008 10:12 AM
19

Giffy wrote:

Remember people are coming freely to this country to work, they are not forced to come [...]. They come because the work here is better then were they come from, and so their kids can have a better shot.

Remember that in many cases they come here because they are one of many farmers whose jobs were lost as a result of the United States dumping its government-subsidised corn in Mexico.

to say that employers should just pay more [if legal labor is unavailable at the price they would prefer to pay] ignores economic reality.

I don't think so.

If US pig producers paid the level of wages American's would demand, assuming there were enough Americans to the jobs of 11 million more people, prices would be much higher.

That is economic reality. If we truly stood for the things we say we stand for (while marching around the globe playing world police and moral authority) our food would cost more. We're hypocrites. We stand for those things only so long as doing so is convenient for us to do so.

We presently get much of our food -- including luxury items like pork -- at unrealistically low prices because we "look the other way" and purchase it from producers who engage in what we consider to be unfair or unsafe practices.

Posted by Phil M | February 4, 2008 10:12 AM
20

If you fucking understood anything as well as I understand everything, you would have the fucking sense to fucking ask me about every fucking stupid bullshit thing you want to shoot off your fucking mouth about.

It's fucking obvious to anyone with a fucking brain that you are victimizing the poor brown pig sniffing immigrants who you claim to feel so fucking sorry for. You sniveling liberals justify your greed by railing against evil corporations and capitalism. The usual leftwing Marxist drivel. Yet you all freeload off the capitalist system you abhor by taking food you didn't pay for from the brown people who are snorting brains to survive. You are literally eating the brains of capitalism without contributing any fucking brains of your own to support that system.

Fools.

Posted by Yoodah | February 4, 2008 11:07 AM
21

Yawn.

Posted by Judah | February 4, 2008 11:12 AM
22

yoodah, you fail to convince. i wonder why?

Posted by ellarosa | February 4, 2008 11:17 AM
23

Judah -

Wetbacks?
):=

Posted by subwlf | February 4, 2008 11:52 AM
24

Yeah, dude, that is not the preferred nomenclature.

Posted by Greg | February 4, 2008 12:08 PM
25

I consider it inappropriate nomenclature for Mexicans because, in that context it's racist. There are plenty of Mexican Americans who were born inside the United States or who entered legally, and it's racist to assume they didn't just because they happen to be of a certain ethnicity.

For people who sneak into the country illegally -- regardless of their country of origin -- I think "wetbacks" works just fine. If I moved to Canada and broke their laws by staying there illegally, I'd expect them to come up with a mean name for me too.

Posted by Judah | February 4, 2008 12:34 PM

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