The Vancouver Scrum

On the move!

Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.

Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.

Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!

—Ian King, December 13, 2004

Monday, March 17, 2003

 
Conservatives often think of themselves as being better-educated in history than the ignorant liberals -- of which I am one. Maybe not. The National Review Online gang caught on to reader Josh Mercer's suggestion about renaming French bread in the same way that American conservatives have been getting rid of the word 'French' everywhere else:
What might work better is what we did during WWI. We renamed frankfurters to be Victory dogs, which then became hot dogs. Think about it: French bread = Victory bread, French toast = Victory toast, French fries = Victory fries, etc."
 Wait a second -- Victory Bread? That's been taken, boys and girls! Surely the well-educated crew over at NRO should know that Victory Bread was an American World War I effort -- promoted by Herbert Hoover, no less! -- to conserve food resouces by using less wheat flour, sugar, and shortening to make the daily loaf. Substitute ingredients like cornmeal and rye were used to conserve flour. All this missed the conservative blogosphere, as the suggestion telegraphed from one rightie to another.

I've had my share of Victory Bread. The old Food Warehouse at 2nd and Commercial in East Vancouver used to sell the stuff at a reasonable price. I recall that it went well with bean soup and other such rationed wartime fare. It's a heavy, rustic loaf, and a forerunner of the ever-trendy multigrain. What it isn't is anything like French bread.

Now you may be asking why it took me a month to catch on to this error about the true nature of Victory Bread. My answer: How friggin' often do you think that I actually check out the NRO weblog? Give me a break! I was trying to look up the bakery that made the stuff that the Food Warehouse used to sell!
More 'France-Bashing', via Doug Adderly from The Republic: Slap France Upside The Head!

I have no idea whether that last site, the Foundation for a Patriotic America, is serious or a send-up of the Freepers and their ilk. If it's serious, it certainly is veering into self-parody.
posted at 09:48 — new improved comments — 0 so far
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