Woke Made Sen. Ernst Choke

By ART CULLEN

Sen. Joni Ernst can work up one hankerin’ hunger in her role as human scaffolding for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to make certain he does not fall over at Capitol press scrums.

So last week she chomped off a hunk of Iowa Chop served by the Cattleman’s Association — yes, Sen. Chuck Grassley said so, and the world just tilted a bit on its axis on Iowa Day in DC — and it got stuck in her throat. She started choking.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., adamant in his opposition to corn ethanol, put politics aside and sprang to action to perform the Heimlich Maneuver. Ernst coughed up the pork, and got them squealing with this line on social media after she came up for air: “Can’t help but choke on the woke policies Dems are forcing down our throats. Thanks @randpaul!”

Good one. Except that it might be bad form to compare the venerated Iowa Chop to low-down Dems. This regal cut of excellence should rise above politics. And, any Iowan should know that the cooks in DC or anyplace else outside of Iowa have no clue how to prepare proper pork. Is this heaven? No, it’s the 801 Chophouse in Des Moines. When in DC, order the ribeye. It might cost a hundred bucks but it can be consumed medium-rare. Which raises that question again: Why are cowboys serving pork chops? I trust checkoff funds were not used to choke Ernst.

Another question: Just what is “woke?”

I didn’t know I was woke until a pollster woke me up to the phrase about five years ago. I drive a hybrid plug-in. I think a gay person might have ridden in it, not sure because the car does not have gaydar. This makes me woke, I guess.

I looked it up on the interwebs. It sounds like the great blues singer Leadbelly coined the phrase in the 1938 song “Scottsboro” about nine Black Alabama teens who were wrongfully accused of raping a White girl. Leadbelly advised young Blacks to “best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

In 1860, a Black youth group formed in Hartford, Conn., called the Wide Awakes to support Abe Lincoln and the Republican ticket.

“Woke” became a political aphorism as other groups latched onto the word and reintroduced it to general culture sometime after 2000. Over the past decade the right wing found woke to be a useful catch-all for fruits and nuts and other things lib, with its roots in racist code. If Blacks came up with the colloquialism, let’s make fun of it as hopelessly stupid and naive. It works every time.

It is woke to think that police murdered George Floyd. It is woke to believe that carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are contributing to a warming climate and extreme weather. It is woke to suggest that Washington and Wall Street worked hand-in-hand to rend independent pork producers and regional processors. It is woke to acknowledge that we depend on undocumented immigrants to produce pork. It is woke to think that Huckleberry Finn should not be banned from schools.

It’s hard to know what is being shoved down the senator’s throat other than some overcooked drug-infused pork. The woke Dems want more aid for Israel and Ukraine for bombs and bombers built by US contractors so the nations can defend themselves, and Rockwell Collins makes a buck or two. Rand Paul is an obstacle to defending Ukraine and Israel, and to developing American energy independence by trying to kill renewable fuels. The woke Biden Administration has unsuccessfully attempted to pursue anti-trust action in the food and tech industries, something Grassley has talked about since Moses was learning to read the Ten Commandments (“No. 11: Thou shalt not overcook an Iowa Chop”) in junior high school. It is woke to defend Social Security against aspirations by Nikki Haley to scotch it. It is woke to get a COVID booster shot, which I just did.

One day will they come to arrest me, when my eyes are closed, for asking why aren’t the pork producers serving up the Iowa Chops? What if the libs were posing as cattlemen to undermine the pork industry by choking a US Senator with shoe leather? Huh? What about that?

The House Judiciary Committee should look into whether Hunter Biden had anything to do with this. This wokeness is getting out of control. They’re stuffing it down our throats. Right there at Iowa Day. Cattlemen serving pork. Make America Great Again or they might serve tofu if those woke get their way. Cattlemen serving tofu. The thought makes me gag even in my wokeness.

Art Cullen is publisher and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2024

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