The other night one of my grad students offered me goldfish crackers. Although I didn’t want any (and it was kind of her to offer), I took the bag to read the label.

Someone else thought I was reading the label to check the calories or the fat content, and said so.

“That’s not what I’m looking for,” I said.

And right away another student said, “Are you looking to see if it has corn products in it?”

I was. And then he and I were off — sidetracking the class into five minute mini-lectures on the abuse to the environment and the food chain that is forced corn feeding, to animals, and to humans. I could link to thousands of articles on the subject, but won’t (you can just Google “High Fructose Corn Syrup” to start, and you’re off and running); instead, I’ll just let you know that I’m one of these people written about recently in the LA Times: a conscientious shopper who reads labels and does everything possible not to buy HFCS products. As I told my class, when I was a kid I ate my fair share of fast food and I guzzled innumerable Mountain Dews and got as little exercise as possible outside reading comic books, and kids today with similar behavior patterns are gaining prodigious weight where I never did. The difference? Now 85% of our food includes corn, and it’s a direct result of U.S. government policies begun in the 1970’s by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz. Yes — and I know how this sounds — all that corn you’re eating is the result of a government plot.

But bear with me.

I just finished helping my 6-year-old boy with his homework, which involved his writing a mini book report — writing his name, the date, the title and author, and then drawing three pictures from the book. I got him through the writing part, despite his howling protests that “You’re killing me!” and “You’re giving me a heart attack!” and two attempts to choke himself with his own hands because I insist on legible penmanship. (My grad students who complain about the notes I wrote on their papers would sympathize.) With regard to the drawing part, I would say that next time he’d rather have his legs sawn off than have to draw. When we were done, he packed up his homework and then recycled some old graded papers he didn’t need any more. When I saw the title of a multi-page stapled project he’d worked on, I fished it out of the trash to read.

It’s entitled: “What Do You Know About Corn?”

I don’t know its origins, although it was handed out by his teacher (who, after all, is teaching a sanctioned curriculum) and has the look of one of those endlessly xeroxed elementary school handouts. So I’m wondering if it wasn’t authored directly by Earl Butz himself, and passed down ever since. It is an encomium to corn.

After three one-page sentences that lay out the fundamentals of the story of corn — when it’s planted, how quickly it grows!, and when it’s harvested — the message politics kick in.

Page 4: “Corn is in catsup, chewing gum, ice cream, candy, and pudding.” Yes — and that is precisely the problem. Because it belongs in none of those things.

Page 5: “Corn is used to feed cattle and people.” Yes — to the distress of both. Cattle get suppurating ulcers from being force-fed corn.

Page 6 (the dramatic conclusion): “Corn is the most valuable crop grown in the United States.”

It’s hard to argue with any of the statements in this little booklet. But if we take any lessons from the 20th century’s geniuses of propaganda — y’know, the folks who brought you all those genocides and wars — it’s that in addition to spreading outright lies, it’s valuable to present facts that build your cause, whether or not these facts are good things. It’s akin to what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness.” There’s factiness in my kid’s corn booklet from school, but it’s not goodliness.

Am I against corn? No. I grew up eating it — on the cob, where it belongs. It’s when it pops up in candy and pudding and Mountain Dew and coffee creamer — all places it doesn’t belong — and my kid gets take-home propaganda about it that I get pissed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.