Success in a free-market system depends on good things like intelligence and motivation and not icky things like nobility and class.1 That’s why America is better than Britain. But if Americans are so damn smart, then why can’t they make good cheese? Simple, because they don’t have to. When the Europeans stop making cheese, then you’ll soon see just how serious Americans can get about cheese making. We can do it. I know we can. We did it with pretzels.2 Other ongoing questions: “Do Americans really have worse taste than Europeans?” Well, if you’re talking about car steering wheels, then yes. And I don’t know who has better fashion sense, but it sure can’t be the Japanese. 3 Not unless you’re into clothes that are more neon than your child’s lunch box. And I’m not saying I’m not. But the cheese question continues to ferment. Why is mass produced cheese so popular over here? Does it sell in Europe or do they all eat Roquefort and Gorgonzola for lunch every day? Well, actually they do. But I did see a commercial on Italian television for Philadelphia cream cheese. At first I thought less of them for it, but then I totally changed my mind. Likelihood of Compassion = (pi x rbrain size)4 / (inherited wealth x 1.2) Then I wondered what would a musical genius like Louis Armstrong have said about all this? I mean, can you imagine Pops asking for 'just a smidgeon of gorgonzola?’ But then again, he was a musical genius. You say sun-dried tom-ay-to, I say sun-dried tom-ah-to. Ze bop ze gorganzola zabidee brie.

---

1 Motivation, either for personal wealth or political power, may or may not be a desired trait, depending on whether you read Plato. Of course, I wouldn’t know Plato from Planet of the Avon Ladies if I hadn’t I hadn’t attended one of those expensive schools where students have their first and last exposure to things like diversity, getting deadlines extended and acapella singing, and where they may even read several pages of Plato’s Republic, which basically consists of three major arguments: 1. that Greeks actually invented basketball, only they called it AXTHYKZIKIS, and it was done sitting at a table drinking the retsina. 2. that the Greek gods were actually not meant to be taken metaphorically, as they had been, wrongly, but were all real people between five foot two and six foot four who lived in the suburbs just outside Athens and paid unearthly rents. 3. that we really need term limits for congress.

2 An obvious reference to the lesser known Nietszcheian line, “They did it with pretzels.”

3 Notwithstanding the fact that a recent USA Today poll found Tokyo edging out New York as the world’s capital of street fashion. Apparently, black is not an actual fashion.