KFC to Activists: Mmm... Fried Chicken!

fter coming under increased scrutiny in recent months for the inhumane treatment of the 736 million chickens they cannonball into American gullets every year, the fast food chain KFC made a sweeping public statement this week to address the concerns of consumers, animal rights activists, and the chickens themselves:

“Mmm… fried chicken!�

The statement, made in a low baritone and accompanied by a belly-rubbing gesture, has incensed PETA activists who have spent years working to change the chain’s practices. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals representatives have accused KFC of buying from suppliers who practice inhumane methods of raising and slaughtering chickens, including using drugs to breed chickens to grotesque proportions which cripple the bird, housing chickens in cages too small for the birds to stand up, resulting in the chickens actually growing around the cage wire, and combating the resulting panicked violent chicken behavior by cutting off the birds’ beaks. PETA also contends that these suppliers finish the screwjob by scalding the birds to death in feather removal tanks, just in case they didn’t get the message that life is a brutal and heartless experience.

Still, this latest statement represents a landmark for KFC, whose previous responses to activists had been even more insulting.

“KFC uses only the highest quality ingredients,� answered KFC’s US spokeswoman Bonnie Warschauer in 1996, rubbing her tummy when asked if it might not be unreasonable for KFC to raise the prices of its meals by a penny to pay for humane improvements, which might keep the general public from having to hear really gross chicken stories from liberal arts majors all the time.

In recent months, all-white-meat actress Pamela Anderson and noted extra-tasty-crispy comedian Russell Simmons have joined PETA in speaking out against the fast-food chain, a move that the group’s officials bemoan but have been powerless to block.

“If people knew how KFC treats chickens, they’d never eat another drumstick,� stated Anderson, no stranger to questionable breast-meat. Drumstick-eaters interviewed the street disagreed with Anderson, arguing that they were pretty sure KFC kills the shit out of their chickens before frying their corpses is scalding oil, but still wanted to know if she was hot in person.

KFC has also come under fire in recent weeks from health groups, who have taken offense at the chain’s commercials promoting KFC as a healthier alternative to other fast foods. The ads in question feature the animated “Colonel� character announcing, “Burgers give you ass cancer!� then rubbing his tummy and intoning sensually “Mmm… fried chicken!�

KFC, a unit of Louisville-based Yum Brands Inc., has been struggling with slumping sales in recent years, and has sought to address both its fiscal and public relations woes with the introduction of the new “extra-tasty-crazy� fried chicken variety, based on the popular assumption that chickens driven mad by slaughterhouse conditions might likely have an especially zesty flavor. The fast food chain was previously known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but changed its name in 1991 to distance its products from the negative connotations of fried foods, chickens, and the state of Kentucky.

This latest obscene hand-gesture directed at animal rights groups by KFC is likely bad news for consumers, as PETA activists are already discussing the possibility of handing out buckets of mutilated chickens in front of KFC restaurants, unless they can think of something more disgustingly gut-wrenching on the way to the protest.

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Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain. The phenomena is so marked, in fact, that inner-city schoolteachers have begun to couch difficult lesson plans in the terms of celebrity scandal, quizzing children on riddles like "If it took OJ three stabs to cut off Nichole's head, how cut-off would her head be after two stabs?" Or, for example, "If car A left Paris going fifty miles an hour, and car B entered Paris going sixty-five miles an hour, how fast would car A be going when it ran over Princess Diana?"

It's the ultimate junk food of the news world, with one celebrity scandal upstaging another almost daily, blowing the old salacious headlines right off the newspapers and proving how quickly the public can forget who stuck his what where. Millions of desperate losers cling to their wretched lives for one reason only: sticking around in hopes of witnessing the ultimate, the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever. And since losers make up the bulk of the commune readership, we're on the case to settle this national quandary once and for all.

So what is the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever? Needless to say, the pack of challengers is thicker than Alabama backhair, and no pedestrian Hollywood fuck-ups need apply. It's got to be more embarrassing than Christian Slater kicking a pair of LAPD officers down the stairs because he was so coked up he thought he was filming Kuffs 2: More Kuffs!. And even more embarrassing than JFK Jr. being egged into a bar bet that he couldn't fly a plane without taking any lessons, and then getting his ass killed in the ocean like John Denver high on asshole powder. And I'm not talking about Jack Paar giving a titty twister to the Queen of England back in 1965 because he thought the queen mother was his buddy Merv Griffin playing a joke on him in drag, either. We're looking for really embarrassing celebrity scandals here.

Right off the bat we can eliminate the first time President Bush met with the UN and tried to buy a hot dog from Secretary General Kofi Annan. That would fall into the "crippling political embarrassment" category anyway and regardless, the president is so far off the public gaffe charts that an incident which would kill a normal politician is, for him, roughly on par with Roseanne Barr farting at a ballgame.

Few things are more embarrassing than accidentally setting yourself on fire, just ask Michael Jackson or Richard Pryor. Even worse is photographic evidence of the same, like the time Samuel L. Jackson's hair caught on fire right before the photo shoot for the Pulp Fiction poster. No one knows if freebase or the highly flammable Jeri-curl wig that Tarantino had on loan from Weird Al Yankovic was the culprit there, but either way moviegoers were left wondering about Jackson's schizophrenic bald/afro hair and if maybe that was his wig on fire inside Marsellus Wallace's mysteriously glowing briefcase.

Getting caught having sex with the wrong person in the wrong place can be even worse than setting yourself on fire, if you do it right. Having sex with any member of Wham anywhere certainly qualifies, as George Michael learned after being caught having sex in the park with George Michael. Hugh Grant kept the English penchant for embarrassing public sex alive when was busted in Hollywood having sex in his car with a poorly-disguised man in 1995, which says all you'll ever need to know about English women.

The last ten years of Robert Downey Jr.'s life would set some kind of "ironman" record for prolonged embarrassment if it weren't for the existence of escaped man-sized Muppet Michael Jackson, who scripts his own life as if he were writing for TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes. But nailing Jacko on a public disgrace is about as tough as falling off stilts in a hurricane, so I'm afraid he's out of the running at least until he gets pantsed by an alien some time next year.

The most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever wasn't Zsa Zsa boxing the cop, Jack Nicholson going Caddyshack on his fellow motorist, or Errol Flynn accidentally having sex with a loaf of raisin bread. Nor was it Kelsey Grammar's tip for the babysitter, Richard Gere's alleged tab at the pet store or America finding out that Milli Vanilli didn't even sing the shitty songs on their album, which technically should have helped their career.

No, I'm afraid the ill-fitting crown belongs to none other than Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, the children's TV star who was caught waxing his wane in an adult theater in 1991 and fell straight off the face of the earth promptly thereafter. Few celebrity arrests have inspired such "soaring eagle into the jet engine" career-trajectory imagery, and whether the death blow was Reubens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the resultant mug shot photos where the beloved children's entertainer appeared looking like Charles Manson on crack, the effect was Godzillian. Is that a word, Godzillian? Should be.

Sorry, Pee Wee. I was hoping it would be J-Lo.

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A midget ate a pigeon
and the pigeon ate a pig.
If that seems odd remember
that the pig was not that big.
He was a bite-sized nugget,
a toy pig as they say,
one that would fit on a keychain
should your inkling lean that way.

The pig had ate an aphid
and the aphid ate a dot
and if you think I mean the candy I assure you I do not.
The dot had ate a nothing since there's nothing there to eat
when you're just a speck of something without appendages or feet.
A speck can't eat a smidgen though a smidgen eats a nit
and a nit can eat a little if he puts his mind to it.

A little eats a sprig which eats a fleck which eats a hint,
and a hint enjoys a mote if it has a hint of mint.
A mote is rather picky, as it eats only a jot,
and a jot can eat a little or a jot can eat a lot.

But not if it is eaten first by an iota or a smitch,
though a smitch prefers a bit of course, if it is not too rich.
And bits are oft predated by a scruple or a whoop,
who would need to quadruple if they were to share a boop.

In which case they would appeal to the brothers snip and snap,
whose appetites are whetted by all things about the size of that.
Though those two mainly spend their time
creeping round in cahoots
and trying not to be gobbled up by dribbets or by hoots.

Though I have to say, none of them have seen a tittle or a whit,
for each is too small to see at all, even if you look right at it.
But if you could, with eyes that good, a hundred you could cram
and still have lots of breathing room
on the inside of a dram.

So a midget ate a pigeon and that pigeon ate a pig.

I don't know what ate the midget 'cause it wore a phony wig.

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