The Muffins of the Damned
I went to a party just the other day and some wretched muffins lay displayed in a steel bowl amid the rest of the snacks. Their tops didn’t even reach the edge of the colorful cupcake papers wrapped around them. Lumpy and vaguely orange, I figured, given the season, they were pumpkin. So, of course I had to try one.
Big mistake. They did taste vaguely like pumpkin. Bland, they were both chewy and crumbling, a difficult feat in a baked good. Unidentifiable lumps could have been nuts or raisins but weren’t. They were so bad, I saw a guy who must have weighed over three-hundred pounds sidle up to the buffet with a predatory gleam in his eye, nibble at a “muffin,” then make a face and head for the trash without swallowing.
Later when the party was breaking up, I saw a blue-haired Millennial chick transferring the muffins from the bowl to a paper plate, I assumed so she could take her bowl home but leave her contribution for others to “enjoy.” She had a whole plateful left. Nothing remained of the other snacks, except for a couple of bowls of chip fragments and the usual veggie platter debris. (I think crudités is actually French for “leave out a couple of hours and then throw away.”)
I gestured at the muffins. “Did you make those?”
She smiled. “Why, yes. Gluten, dairy, and sugar free Vegan pumpkin muffins. My own recipe!”
Thinking that eating unseasoned pumpkin straight out of the can with a spoon would have been more tasty, I replied, “Amazing!” I made myself scarce before she could ask what I found so remarkable.
Later I reflected on the incident. I think those muffins are a good metaphor for what political correctness has done to our culture. It’s become bland, tasteless, and rather unpleasant with no definite texture, crumbling around the edges and held together by the most flimsy of wrappers—bright, and gaily decorated, but with no real substance. Lacking a discernible flavor, it seems to stand for nothing, neither sweet, nor salty, having an unidentifiable texture that can be described many ways but never as good. The only reason it’s like this is because someone in authority decreed “it’s better this way,” that somehow just as our traditional gluten, dairy, and sugar are all “bad,” so is Western Civilization even though for thousands of years people sought those very things and considered it suffering to go without. And just as at the party, nobody these days says anything against this view. They avoid speaking the truth because that just leads to trouble. And so politically correct movies bomb, the LGBT-oriented novels and feminist comic books don’t sell, and progressive TV shows have poor ratings—just like everybody ate up all the pizza rolls and flautas before the fat guy even got to the buffet, leaving him a selection of picked-over veggies and those sad muffins. (Last I saw him, he was nibbling a cucumber slice.) Hungry people will eat what’s available, even if they don’t care for it. The Politically Correct Approved Solution to get people to eat what’s been declared good for them at a buffet is to only allow stuff that’s Vegan-friendly and peanut-free.
And that’s why Google and Facebook and YouTube are so aggressive about blocking Politically Incorrect content—because nobody’s going to eat the muffins of the damned if there’s anything else available. And that’s why Hollywood keeps remaking movies. They have to replace all the old “classics” like The Terminator, Ocean’s Eleven and Ghostbusters with gluten-free, sugar-free, no fat, all PC versions.
Welcome to pop culture Hell.
If you’d like to see my contributions to real culture, my novels and books are available on Amazon and at www.smashwords.com. Just look for author name M.E. Brines.
Big mistake. They did taste vaguely like pumpkin. Bland, they were both chewy and crumbling, a difficult feat in a baked good. Unidentifiable lumps could have been nuts or raisins but weren’t. They were so bad, I saw a guy who must have weighed over three-hundred pounds sidle up to the buffet with a predatory gleam in his eye, nibble at a “muffin,” then make a face and head for the trash without swallowing.
Later when the party was breaking up, I saw a blue-haired Millennial chick transferring the muffins from the bowl to a paper plate, I assumed so she could take her bowl home but leave her contribution for others to “enjoy.” She had a whole plateful left. Nothing remained of the other snacks, except for a couple of bowls of chip fragments and the usual veggie platter debris. (I think crudités is actually French for “leave out a couple of hours and then throw away.”)
I gestured at the muffins. “Did you make those?”
She smiled. “Why, yes. Gluten, dairy, and sugar free Vegan pumpkin muffins. My own recipe!”
Thinking that eating unseasoned pumpkin straight out of the can with a spoon would have been more tasty, I replied, “Amazing!” I made myself scarce before she could ask what I found so remarkable.
Later I reflected on the incident. I think those muffins are a good metaphor for what political correctness has done to our culture. It’s become bland, tasteless, and rather unpleasant with no definite texture, crumbling around the edges and held together by the most flimsy of wrappers—bright, and gaily decorated, but with no real substance. Lacking a discernible flavor, it seems to stand for nothing, neither sweet, nor salty, having an unidentifiable texture that can be described many ways but never as good. The only reason it’s like this is because someone in authority decreed “it’s better this way,” that somehow just as our traditional gluten, dairy, and sugar are all “bad,” so is Western Civilization even though for thousands of years people sought those very things and considered it suffering to go without. And just as at the party, nobody these days says anything against this view. They avoid speaking the truth because that just leads to trouble. And so politically correct movies bomb, the LGBT-oriented novels and feminist comic books don’t sell, and progressive TV shows have poor ratings—just like everybody ate up all the pizza rolls and flautas before the fat guy even got to the buffet, leaving him a selection of picked-over veggies and those sad muffins. (Last I saw him, he was nibbling a cucumber slice.) Hungry people will eat what’s available, even if they don’t care for it. The Politically Correct Approved Solution to get people to eat what’s been declared good for them at a buffet is to only allow stuff that’s Vegan-friendly and peanut-free.
And that’s why Google and Facebook and YouTube are so aggressive about blocking Politically Incorrect content—because nobody’s going to eat the muffins of the damned if there’s anything else available. And that’s why Hollywood keeps remaking movies. They have to replace all the old “classics” like The Terminator, Ocean’s Eleven and Ghostbusters with gluten-free, sugar-free, no fat, all PC versions.
Welcome to pop culture Hell.
If you’d like to see my contributions to real culture, my novels and books are available on Amazon and at www.smashwords.com. Just look for author name M.E. Brines.
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