Monday, July 12, 2010

Lady M Wanders the Food Desert

We’ve landed here in Northern Florida, and it’s hot! But not as hot as Lady M’s blistering speech this morning.

Our speech (we were the keynote speaker, naturally)  before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (although there seemed to be mostly only one color there) went extraordinarily well. We used this impressive gathering to speak again about our kids’ fat behinds, and how we have to stop feeding them junk, or they’re all going to die. The crowd was mesmerized.

 FireShot-  That’s right, no more french fries!

She charmed the crowd with everything from her idiosyncratic grammar: "we ate what we were served. My mother never cared whether me or my brother liked what was on our plates.” to her total command of the statistics regarding food deserts in America.

naacp Look! TOTUS came! That’s how you know it was a really important speech.

One of the key points of our keynote was Lady M’s reminder that she’s supporting a “Healthy Food Financing Initiative"  which costs $400 million a year – and that’s just to attract food retailers to the deserts! They’ll have to come up with the start up funds on their own. The $400 million, as I understand it, will be split evenly between Jesse Jackson’s Operation Push shakedown arm and independent contractors. JJ’s $200 million will be used to persuade Piggly Wigglys to come back to “urban centers” just because it’s the right thing to do. The other $200 million will be divided up into multiple contracts for peoples of color who have the right political connections. They’ll be using the funds to put together brochures telling the Piggly Wigglys  management team why it’s in their best interest to open up a store in (fill in the blank with the urban center of your choice). And of course their will be administrative costs, plus shipping and handling. But we figure the whole initiative will create or save about 1500 jobs, so this one’s a twofer.

Oh, and I almost forgot – there’s about $10,000 to address rural food deserts too.

  NAACP_Michelle_Obam_633073l For the occasion we chose our favorite summer domino optical illusion dress. Short, sassy, sheer chiffony sleeves. Perfect with a mile wide belt.

Delegate comments about Lady M’s speech were predictably supportive:

Helen Pierce, an NAACP delegate from Fayetteville, N.C., said “Obama's speech is a wake-up call to young people and their parents.”

Nathalie Bryant of Indianapolis, called the speech relevant to current circumstances related to overweight youths. "What she said about food deserts, that's a really important issue that needs to be addressed," Bryant said.

Wow! That Lady M, she really took it to them, didn’t she? Straight talk express. Who would have thought that kids’ fat behinds could stir the soul so?

Too bad Bill Cosby didn’t have a little more soul when he gave his keynote address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 2004. His speech just pissed everyone off.

billcosbypoundcake

We changed clothes and jewelry before departing for our Gulf Coast Empathy Tour, but we kept the hair. I’ll report on that in the morning. I hear we’re having oysters and gulf shrimp tonight: I sure hope Lady M doesn’t over-indulge. We’ve got our first ‘Fat Kids’ Behinds’ Webcast in the morning.

PS: here’s the designer who created our Morse Code dress, Dottie Duglas.

thats_a_moire_mslk