The ketchup-salsa shift

Folks hereabouts worried — make that “alarmed” — about America’s
tilt to the left can heave a hefty sigh of relief because it has just
come to my attention that ketchup sales are suddenly soaring ahead of
salsa, and if anything’s an indicator of anything, that sure is.

The Ketchup-Salsa Shift, my friends, signifies the pendulum has swung
back and America has regained its — some would say — rightful
direction. A return to rectitude. Once again, our country has begun
tilting to the right. And rightfully so. Right?

While this may not exactly be an indicator necessarily embraced by
patriots, Republicans, Libertarians, the Forbeses and Trumps and
Buchanans of the world, the Reform Party, Whigs, or even Mr. Andrea
Mitchell a.k.a. Alan Greenspan, I believe it is an extremely reliable
one.

Ketchup is back, beating Salsa $498 million to $480 million in
1998. This is after skittering sales in the ’90s due to what some would
say was Heinz’s short-sighted jacking up prices and killing off most
advertising — in short, bad business moves, which have been reversed.
For the first time in a decade, you will be able to see ketchup
commercials on television — MTV, Party of Five, Dawson Creek. Whee!!

And so, H J Heinz Co. is happy. America is
happy. A simple but potent equation.

I am not endorsing this shift from salsa to ketchup, I am merely
reporting it. My socio-geo-ideo-political sympathies, as you must know,
lie elsewhere.

Think, for a moment, who eats salsa: yuppies, poseurs, ethnic
wannabes, NPR granola-munchers/Birkenstock-wearers, and macho
know-nothings — MY PEOPLE!! — seeking to burn new holes in their
stomachs by ingesting huge quantities of mega-hot chili peppers to
overpower those dull, dull, dull corn chips as they tear their way
through your intestines, wreaking digestive mayhem wherever they go.

Yes, salsa is downright subversive. Besides, has anyone ever tried to
dance to ketchup?

Call it the heartbreak of salsa, but the left, my left (sob!),
is limping. I trust these numbers. Fellow leftists (your code-name
here), hurry up and get organized around this issue! Call Noam
Chomsky and Ed Herman, if you have
to and Ralph Nader and
Omali Yeshitela. Get them involved;
otherwise, it’s time to bite the Big Enchilada.

Ketchup
practically came over on the Mayflower. The British, who undoubtedly
snagged the recipe from China or Malaysia, first used it to disguise the
nasty flavor of their, uh, cuisine in the 17th century. And so, while
Henry J. Heinz began making ketchup in 1876, he neither invented it, nor
was first to bottle it commercially, though his recipe has not changed
much since then. Meanwhile, Ketchup’s preparation, ingredients, but
especially thickness are federally regulated beyond belief by the
FDA.
Incredibly enough, last year H.J. Heinz, in a desperate stab at
nutritional relevance, touted its ketchup’s health benefits (Ketchup Is
Good For You!) — despite its high sugary, acidic contents — during a
mercifully brief ad campaign lauding lycopene, an antioxidant
which has been linked to possibly reducing certain cancers and heart
disease. Nevertheless, the Heinz factory in Pittsburgh features a nifty
neon ketchup bottle that “pours.”

Hey, didn’t tomato aficionado Andrew F. Smith christen ketchup
“America’s National Condiment?” Surely, that should stand for something.

So you can take your public opinion polls and make them into
telephone poles, for what I care. Me, I think they’re meaningless. All
of them. While I didn’t actually study statistics in college, I know how
these buggers work. Think of a roomful of people asked a question, and
how some will answer based on what they think they are supposed to
think, and others will answer to impress the ultimate audience of the
survey, whatever that is, and you end up with a bushel of useless
replies which get cataloged, canonized, and disseminated as some sort of
ultimate truth.

You’ve seen that mechanism at work. Well, people responding to
written questionnaires or telephone interviewers are the same. Most
often they give the answers they think other people want to hear. So how
can we ever trust any survey of anything anywhere? Beats me.

Then there’s the mathematical aspect of it. Median, mode,
mean. Come on! To say nothing of the standard deviance. Puhleeze!
When it comes to deviance, why encourage it? Look at where it’s led us
as a nation … to the edge of the moral abyss.

Besides, who IS the standard deviant? Pee Wee Herman? Richard
Simmons? Dennis Rodman? Marv Albert?

And we haven’t even nailed, er, mentioned focus groups, where
ordinary, normal, boring people are gathered together to take money for
spouting their inane, mawkish, useless opinions on mundane goods or
services like, say, airplane hankies, in venal little “spill sessions”
run by advertising and marketing gurus who will then come up with
irresistible life-and-death appeals to our pocketbooks.

Like that great radio commercial for Absolut Courant liqueur just
yanked off the air. Though I don’t really drink, except for a rare glass
of wine or two in Rome or, hopefully Paris, I was totally mesmerized by
this audio mini-drama: The desperately clever attempted pickup-scene in
a bar, that stunned guy barely getting a word in edgewise, steam-rolled
by some incredibly zany, fast-talking, theatrically neurotic chick a lot
like me; they’re driving each other crrrraaaaazy, just like in
real life, and then nothing happens, even more like real life!
Nearly as entertaining as the old Bob and Ray radio spots which never
sold much of anything but sure tickled your fancy.

Call me cynical, but ever since I read Harvard philosopher Sissela
Bok’s book on
lying, I
don’t believe much of anything anyone says anymore. Anywhere. Unless, of
course, it is backed up by signed and notarized affidavits, plus at
least six months of consistent behavior, stock options, a company Mazda
or Mercedes, daily phone calls, round-trip plane tickets to Paris, an
un-diamond engagement ring and/or other non-exploitive, tangible
manifestations of intention beyond the initial declaration. Or at least
Eagle-Scout status, unless that has been devalued by “spin,” too.

Meanwhile, I foresee an even greater return to the right
vis-a-vis the Ketchup-Salsa Shift, since the 130-year-old Heinz
company has launched a new $50-million global advertising campaign with
the Leo Burnett ad agency seeking to make ketchup the condiment
of choice for cutting-edge teens.

Yanno, like, duh, for hotdogs in the USA, omelets in Spain, pasta in
Sweden, potato chips in Thailand. Did they forget escargot in France?
Yum!

The ad campaign’s new Ketchup slogans targeting teens are, natch,
catchy: “Plays rough with tater tots” and “Meatloaf’s only hope.”
Terrific. They plan to pitch ketchup to adolescents as they watch TV,
hang out in clubs, flip through fashion mags, and surf the Net.

Get ’em while they’re young. Build that pubescent cadre of
right-wingers and forget the Third Way. Next up, perhaps, a compelling
anime cartoon character called Joe (“Heinz is Phat!”)
Ketchup whose visage will doubtlessly consist of a semi-vulgar
amalgamation of the subliminally sexual elements product marketeers love
so well.

Start ’em on ketchup, who knows where these teenagers might land,
perhaps ketchup-and-cottage cheese country, like that great American,
Richard Nixon. Probably not in Gourmand-Ville stirring up a
demi-glace reduction sauce, that’s for sure. I can see Allan
Bloom coming
back from the dead and leading a chorus of outraged intellectual food
snobs in protest, drum-beating “The Closing Of The American
Palate,” but I guess, like Walter Cronkite said, that’s the way it
is.

Right-wingers, the world — our world — rests in your hands.
Now what are you going to do with it?