The bigot hiding in your fridge

Some people manage to see racism and bigotry in everything. They claim
TV is racist. The movies are racist. Sports are racist. Weight
standards for humans are racist. A red soda drink is racist. It never
ends.

Some black activists and Bill Maher of "Politically Incorrect" think
reality TV shows, like "Survivor" and "Big Brother," are racist. They
claim black contestants on these shows are unappealing and voted off
sooner rather than later. But that's not the case, as with the latest
"Survivor," where black contestants, like law student Nick and fitness
trainer Alicia, are attractive and athletic. It has nothing to do with
skin color. And everything to do with the undue paranoia of the racism
police.

Black film director Spike Lee, who had no problem denigrating Italians and
Jews in his movies, claimed Mel Gibson's blockbuster, "The Patriot," was
racist. It didn't show slavery and discrimination at the time of the
Revolutionary War, he says. But, sorry to inform Mr. Lee, while there
were many blacks who valiantly fought in the Civil War, slaves were not
a major part of the American Revolution. And, Lee claims, black
characters in movies are relegated to "magical friends" costarring
roles, not major starring roles as heroes. Apparently, he never saw
Wesley Snipes in "Passenger 57" or "Death at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," or Will Smith in "Men in black" and "Enemy of the State," or Denzel
Washington in "The Siege." And the list goes on.

But those are just works of fictional entertainment.

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The latest target of the racism conspiracy theory, is something real --
the U.S. dietary guidelines for meals and nutrition put out by the
Department of Agriculture. They've got to be kidding. But they
aren't. Yes, the poor, old "food pyramid," is now the latest symbol of
oppression of minorities. "The U.S. dietary guidelines as they exist are
really a fundamental form of institutionalized racism in a rather
destructive and insidious format," Dr. Milton Mills, who is black, wrote
in the Journal of the National Medical Association (JNMA).

"Isn't it called the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA)?" you ask. No, that's the respected medical journal of the
AMA. Mills is a member of the far-left Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (PCRM). You know, the same PCRM that always sides
with animal rights groups, recommends vegetarianism, unilateral
disarmament, gun control, and a whole litany of other political views
that have more to do with quackery than sound medicine.

So what makes the food pyramid racist? It recommends that all Americans
have two-to-three servings of dairy products each day, while 70 percent of black
Americans are allegedly lactose intolerant and can't eat dairy,
according to the JNMA. Most Asian Americans, American Indians, and
Hispanics are lactose intolerant, too, while the condition is rare only
among Americans of northern European descent, the JNMA claims. So, of
course, the food pyramid must be a racist plot. By that twisted logic,
though, vegetarian restaurants are also racist, since most black
Americans are not vegetarians, and such restaurants do not serve
traditional soul food items like fried chicken and pork chitlins.

Puh-leeze.

Many senior citizens are lactose intolerant, too -- a symptom that comes
with old age. But you don't hear anyone claiming the food pyramid is ageist.

Besides, if the USDA's guidelines were so racist, why didn't Mike Espy,
the Clinton administration's black secretary of agriculture, get rid of
them? Perhaps, he was too busy attending Super Bowls and tropical
island paradises with his girlfriend, courtesy of the food companies,
like Tyson Chicken, he was supposed to regulate. Or maybe he was too
busy defending himself against the special prosecutor who indicted him
for it. But while he was in office, he found none of the purported
racism in the nutrition guidelines. And since lactose intolerance is
also common among Jews, you'd think his successor, Clinton Ag Secretary
Dan Glickman (who's Jewish), would find a similar food-pyramid
conspiracy. No such luck for the racism and bigotry victimologists.

This ridiculous race-baiting against the food pyramid is reminiscent of
an old Chris Rock skit from "Saturday Night Live" -- "Late Night with Nat
X."

Rock's "Nat X" Top-5 list illuminated "Why Hockey's a Racist Game": "Reason No. 2, it's cold out there. And Reason No. 1, white men with sticks." But actually, there are and almost always have been plenty of black professional hockey players, including current players Donald Brashear of the National Hockey League's Vancouver Canucks, Anson Carter and Mike Grier of the Edmonton Oilers, and many others. And past black NHL stars, like goalie Grant Fuhr (whom I once represented), Tony McKegnie, and Graeme Townsend. The Oilers presently have five black players on their roster, and the Calgary Flames and New York Rangers each have two.

Hockey's not racist and neither is the food pyramid. But both items
demonstrate the undue paranoia upon which a whole industry of victims
has been built. It's time for the racism conspiracy theorists to fade
off into the sunset. But the captains of this industry -- Jesse Jackson,
Al Sharpton, Spike Lee and the like -- won't. The spoils these "victims"
get are too lucrative to forsake.

Their guiding principle: Just as a magician can pull a rabbit out of a
hat, he can find racism there, too. If you're really creative -- and
really ridiculous -- you can find it anywhere you look. Even in that
gallon of milk in the fridge.