Take heart Batman! A recent study at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab found that when children were asked if the Caped Crusader would eat apples (good) or fast food French fries (bad), they overwhelming said their hero would choose apples!
Wow! Pow! Bang! So move over film critics who of late have negatively reviewed the most recent Batman film, The Black Knight Rises, as having little merit.
The movie’s talented director, Christopher Nolan, has even gone on record to defend the many fans who have responded to the critics’ negative reviews by storming the Internet.
The resulting digital wave was so massive that the popular cinema info site, Rotten Tomatoes, closed down the viewers’ comment area. Rather sad.
But possibly the strangest of the strange was Rush Limbaugh’s seeing sinister political plots by President Obama and Hollywood, where none existed, by confusing the film’s villain’s name, Bane with Mitt Romney’s controversial firm, Bain.
With just a little study (no apple from the teacher for Limbaugh), this extreme conservative radio host would have learned that the movie’s hateful character was actually created by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan (both lifelong conservatives) back in 1993, years before Romney began asking Americans to consider electing him president.
So at this point, the children in the Cornell Test Lab seem a whole lot smarter than this ill-informed commentator who often advances his career through hateful speech on a wide range of topics, including labeling those who advocate healthy food choices for children as "Food Nazis".
His comments are not just sad thoughtless speech, but rather the hazardous habit of substituting hate for truthful useful information.
Post Note, July 20, 2012: The staff of YourCulinaryWorld.com arrived at the office greatly saddened today by the tragic news from Aurora, Colorado where many people were killed and many more injured by a masked shooter during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises.
The question that comes to mind as we discuss this horror is "Why?" Why must our world be like this? Why must be the innocent suffer?
We do not have the answer. We wished we did, but we do know that we must seek to understand the source of such violence, no matter how ugly the resulting answers may be to us or about us.
Only then can we change the future and genuinely leave these darkened days behind us, rather than endlessly repeat the past, complete with all its senseless clubs and stones, guns and bombs. Then perhaps the seemingly ceaseless stream of tears that floods our world might stop.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
