Pork Barrel Politics

A Dark Corner Vignette - Always Fictional, Somewhat Factual

Dark Corner, SC - President Biden outlined a new strategy yesterday to distract voters from his ballooning impeachment problem. Echoing President Herbert Hoover’s promise to put a chicken in every pot, Biden vowed, in a sweeping expansion of federal entitlement programs, to put a pig in every poke.

Republicans were quick to respond. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and current presidential candidate pointedly declared that Biden’s promise was pork-barrel politics personified. He, along with the other Gang of Two member former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) and current presidential candidate vowed to derail all pig distribution efforts. Scott said, “Even if we have to shut down the whole federal government, there will be no pigs poked. Biden won’t be able to even rent a pig to hand out.” Haley assured Republican women voters that shoats and piglets were in no danger of being put into the pokey. Response in the DC was mixed.

Boaris Grinder, owner of Grinder’s Pork Skins, a major manufacturer of pork rinds, footballs and other pork products in the metro DC area, worried about what an influx of foreign pigs would do to the pork skin market. “The pig skin business is tough enough as it is and what we don’t need is a bunch of south of the border pigs entering the market and driving down our prices. Plus, how’s it going to impact our football manufacturing division. No future SEC recruit wants to play with a non-American pig skin football.”

In contrast, Deliah Dodd, a concerned citizen, was elated that the President she voted for was finally bringing home the bacon. “He’s been up there for two years and ain’t sent me nothing until now. I hope my pig is pink. But with my luck, it will be one of those nasty hairy white ones that grunt when they rooting around – you know – like my brother Clarence. He just gets out in the yard when he’s drunk after working a shift at the pork plant and roots up a storm gruntin’ and squealin’ all the time. Sometimes I got to turn the hose-pipe on him. I told him that he’s going to lose his job down at Grinder’s if he don’t straightened up.”

Monroe Dillicious, head of the MA&DCGA Party, was not impressed with the prospect of more federal pork. “This poke pig business shows that the oppressive federal government has far exceeded its Constitutional powers. Everybody knows that the Founding Fathers intended for pigs to be distributed by the States and not by the feds as it clearly says in the 10th Amendment.”

Thpls Hggnbthm, prominent anti-vowel agitator and semi-anonymous founder of the newly formed animal rights group We Don’t Hide Our Pigs And You Can’t Make Us summed up the response from DC progressives by saying, “We must protect the pig from the cannibal . . . I mean the consumeristic nature of the crypto-capitalistic federal government. We are one with the pig - in or out of a poke. I ask you, is not their meat rainbow colored, just like ours?”

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. . . and a little more about pig rentals based on an actual sighting . . .

No Pigs For Rent

Used to be up
around Asheville,
down beside a 
mountain road ran
a fence on which 
hung a commode 
seat with the words 
scrawled across its 
weathered white lid 
in plain black ink 
“No Pigs For Rent.”

Two farmers whose 	
fields were split by 
this bold statement 
would meet each day
beside their throne
and laugh and laugh 
whenever a 
passerby stopped
usually from 
the North to ask 
what did they mean 
that their pigs could 
not be rented.

Science proves! The
nosey trav’lers 
would say in their 
know-it-all way
that pigs can’t fly,
hogs don’t eat high
and clover can’t 
make them happy.

Further research 
shows that pigs will
not stay home nor 
run off to the 
market nor eat 
roast beef or even 
bacon for that 
matter as was 
alleged in that 
song by George 
Harrison about 
Charlie Manson 
and by the way 
pigs ears do not 
make good purses.

You must accept
that polling proves
public support 
has moved away
from pig rentals 
or even leases
to keep them on 
your premises.

We think that you
hillbillys are
trying to sell 
us a poke sans 
pig by making 
such bold statements
that your pigs would 
even agree 
to be rented.

A cold airish
silence ensued.

Then terrectly,
one farmer said
to the other
Come on, cousin
let’s go yonder
from their science
and bad polling. 

We won’t waste our 
time casting pearls 
before this kind 
of witless swine 
or endorse their 
boarish behavior.

-	Tommy Stringer 2023

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All characters are fictional but the article contains at least one fact. Guaranteed.