Dear Dirty America

If Stephen Colbert is the caricature of Bill O’Reilly, then Dear Dirty America is that to any publication like the Huffington Post. There are times that O’Reilly out-O’Reilly’s himself and actually, accidentally, sucks the wind from Stephen Colbert’s satirical blowhard right-wing fanaticism.

The HuffPo has out Po-ed itself with this recent line about a local Chicago hot dog shop, called Hot Doug’s:

“The hot dog is a symbol of Chicago,” said Peter Alter, archivist at the Chicago History Museum, which features a giant plastic bun where kids can lie down like a frank and cover themselves in fake relish, mustard, pickles and the rest of what gives a hot dog its Chicago style.

Is there any way, gentle reader, that you can read through that line without cracking an ugly sounding laugh? The Huffington Post is trying to write my articles for me and put me out of work. I can hardly rip out a satirical piece because there’s nothing much left to lampoon here.

“Perhaps it is time to leave,” one University of Chicago graduate student named Niles told reporters, “when your city is happily symbolized by a wiener.”

But not every resident of the windy city thinks that way. Others have paid to get colorful tattoos of hot dogs on their arms in order to get free franks from Hot Doug’s for life. These people are, understandably, devastated to hear that Doug’s is closing down after 13 years of service. These are the same adults who, as children, reveled in being able to “lie down like a frank” in the giant plastic bun at the Chicago History Museum.

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Goodbye Hot Doug’s; what will you do with your hot dog tattoo?

[Hot dog billboard photo by Mykl Roventine]