Champion Chip

As I waver in blog uncertainty, who comes to my rescue but my favorite terrible local newspaper, RedEye (a "hip" free daily paper squirted out by the fine people at the Chicago Tribune).

As I walked to my seat on the train, I picked up a copy of today's RedEye off a seat. No, the cover wasn't anything about Obama, Huckabee, or the Iowa caucuses. The cover was some pictures of potato chips. Apparently, "hip" newspaper readers are dying to know what the "champion" chip is.

Thankfully for readers of this blog, the RedEye's website represents the relative importance of potato chips and presidential candidates in a similarly appropriate manner:

#1 story


#2 story


I'm filled with lots of questions from today's RedEye.

1. Is the Tribune trying to appeal to a demographic it considers moronic?
2. Does the media cover politics the way it covers potato chips?
3. Does the juxtaposition of potato chips with the presidential race foreground the ongoing debasement of our political discourse?

One thing that I was disappointed in was the fact that the RedEye writers/editors did not take the next logical step -- to make a correlation between the the most popular potato chips and the most popular presidential candidates.

For example, Mike Huckabee won the GOP's Iowa caucus, and Jay's was the champion chip. But from what I could tell, nobody at RedEye called Huckabee the Jay's potato chip candidate of the Iowa caucus. Well, just because RedEye didn't make the connection, doesn't mean I can't.

Disclaimer: I am listing the candidates and potato chips in descending popularity, alternating between Republican and Democratic Party candidates - no attempt was made to pick the potato chip name that most suited the candidate.

Mike Huckabee - Jays
Barack Obama - Lay's Classic
Mitt Romney - Ruffles
John Edwards - Pringles
Fred Thompson - Krunchers!
Hillary Clinton - Lay's Light
John McCain - Cape Cod (Old Fashioned Kettle-Cooked)
Bill Richardson - Kettle (lightly salted)
Ron Paul - Baked! Lay's
Joe Biden - Munchos


Oh, the answers to the above questions are:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes