Can't Win for Losing

Closeup of Ray's Hell Burger with Danish Bleu cheese, applewood smoked bacon, roasted garlic, and sauteed onions (elitist!!!) by Flickr user Alicia Griffin.

The elitists (OK, people who like their meat to taste like meat) ripped Obama for ordering a burger, at Ray's Hell Burger outside D.C., medium well (Spencer Ackerman at Ezra Klein's Internet Food Association: "wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong and a crime against meat!"). The rubes (AKA rich Republicans pretending to be "of the people") complained that his choice of Dijon mustard was "elitist" ("Dijongate"!! "Arugula-like"!! "John Kerry-ish"!!)--never mind that Grey Poupon is PRODUCED BY FREAKING KRAFT, and comes in a plastic bottle that makes a fart sound when you squeeze it.

Now even the food-safety folks are weighing in on Obama's food choice--suggesting, as groundbreaking food-safety attorney Bill Marler did, that Obama may not have gone far enough, given that even a medium-well burger could potentially harbor E. coli. "What is medium well? Is it sufficient to kill the deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria? Given that in 2006 USDA/FSIS recalled less that 200,000 pounds of E. coli-tainted hamburger and over 44,000,000 pounds have been recalled since the Spring of 2007, was the President taking a risk just over 100 days after taking office?" Marler wrote, in a post titled "Obama Orders and Eats a Medium Well Burger - Did it have E. coli O157:H7 in it? What was the Internal Temperature? Is he going to Die?" Slightly less hyperbolically, Obama Foodorama pointed out that Ray's Hell Burger had several "critical health violations" in its last public health inspection, including mouse droppings, handling food without gloves, and failing to inform customers of the danger of eating undercooked meat. "In future, when the President is making 'unannounced' stops at local eateries, it would be terrific if he'd order his burger fully cooked, since his 'people' clearly aren't checking the health records of restaurants, which are frequently available online," Obama Foodorama's Eddie wrote.