Mike Royko is Dead

A few years ago I used this column to lampoon Mike Royko, the great Chicago newspaperman, and a column he had written lampooning vegetarians. I thought I was being very clever in my lampoon of his lampoon—shooting barbs at Mr. Royko's arguments, and pointing to the places where the humor in his writing seemed to be wearing a little thin and exposing a narrow-minded point of view. (Hey, it's always fun to be a nobody and get the chance to attack a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer!) At the end of my column I noted that if Mr. Royko really ate in the "damn the cholesterol, full speed ahead" manner he espoused, he probably wouldn't be around as a target for pot-shots for too many more years.

It turns out I was right. Mike Royko died of a brain aneurysm in April, 1997, at the relatively young age of 64.

I felt bad when I heard the news. It was one of those situations (Remember when James Garner and Dave Thomas had heart attacks at the same time their beef ads were running on television?) when we vegetarians want to say "I told you so," but at the same time we don't wish harm on anyone. And there's certainly a fine line between making fun of someone else's beliefs and making fun of them personally.

After several months of consideration though, I've decided that if I could write my Mike Royko column over again, I wouldn't change a word. There are two reasons for that decision, and they're important enough to me, and important enough to vegetarianism, that I want to point them out. I'm sure Mr. R will agree.

The Right to be Offensive

First, we live in a marvelous society that recognizes freedom of speech. And one critical element of freedom of speech (an element that rarely gets mentioned in Fourth of July parades and high school essay contests) is that no one in our society has the right not to be offended. How critical is this to the vegetarian cause? Very. Several times, even in the life of this silly little column, issues involving "political correctness," my overall bad taste, and the sensibilities of others have threatened its publication. But think about it. If we vegetarians weren't allowed to offend anyone, how on earth would we get our point across? How would we ever reach the masses of meat-eaters who don't want their comfortable lifestyles upset by something as trivial as the truth?

Being offensive may not always be something to strive for, and I certainly don't advocate intentionally hurting anyone. But the right to be offensive in expressing one's beliefs—whether that involves me attacking an icon like Mike Royko, or your cousin Mel ridiculing this column with the boys down at the butcher shop—is critical. When that right starts to erode, I'll be headed to another planet.

Everything is Funny

The second item on my First Amendment soapbox agenda is humor. We live in a world of incomprehensible horror and tragedy. Humor is the only thing we've been given that allows us to cope. (The only legal thing, anyway.) The more serious something is—the more horror and tragedy that's involved—the more we need humor. Need I say that the battle between vegetarianism and meat-eating should be at the top of the list?

There's a lot of funny stuff out there in the dialogue over meat-eating, and a lot of it makes fun of us vegetarians. It ranges from the classic recipe for vegetarian stew ("Gut, drain and skin one vegetarian…"), to the sarcastic Boulder Vegetable Rights Association, to the People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA) home page. Offensive? You bet! But doesn't it beat serious men and women screaming out their message in angry prose? Doesn't it make their point so much more effectively?

Mike Royko knew a lot about being offensive, and he knew a lot about being funny. The former made his writing important, while the latter made him loved. It was only late in his career, when consolidation in the Chicago newspaper industry and the death of his wife left him battling depression and alcohol problems, that his anger became more pronounced and his humor began to fade. It was only then that people openly questioned his right to speak. That in itself should tell us all something about how to conduct ourselves the next time we're ready to spout off about our vegetarian beliefs.

Mike Royko loved to eat meat, and now he's dead. But we vegetarians can still learn a lot from his example.

Funny Things from the Newspaper [The original “Mike Royko” column]

Recently I spotted two things in the paper that were so outrageous, and so offensive to common sense and decency, that I just knew they'd make great column material. The first was an advertisement by the Colorado Beef Council promoting the cow as "Mother Nature's Recycling Machine." Make no mistake about it, this ad was so full of untruths and half-truths it should be framed and sent to New York, where it can serve as the inspiration for future generations on Madison Avenue. The beef industry types will want to quote verbatim from this one at the next Congressional hearings on grazing leases. They'd better have their lawyers with them.

The other thing that caught my eye was a piece by Mike Royko, the syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He decided to lash out at vegetarian activism and healthy foods generally, and at Jeremy Rifkin and McDonald's phenomenally unsuccessful McLean burger in particular. Mr. Royko is a humorous guy, but what comes screaming out of his writing is the image of an aging good-old-boy threatened by changes in our society he refuses to understand. It almost makes you lose sight of the funny stuff.

For those of you fortunate enough to have missed these two journalistic classics, I quote liberally below.

First, Enlightenment from the Colorado Beef Council

[I swear they're serious about this. I'm not making these quotes up!]

"Cows make the most of our food production resources,"

Yeah, sure. And everyone who eats beef has an IQ of 200. I'm a millionaire with the bronzed body of a Greek god, and the Pope reads this column "religiously." Isn't fantasy wonderful?

"...healthful, nutritious, low-fat beef."

It's all in your frame of reference, I guess. Everyone knows the beef folks have financed carefully controlled tests of their product's nutritional value. When pitted against such popular foods as suet, fried "pork" skins, Ben & Jerry's double chocolate fudge ice cream, and wood alcohol, beef came out looking like a nutritional winner!

"Like mowing a lawn or pruning a tree, cattle grazing promotes plant vigor and diversity."

Anyone who's ever looked at a fence line in the American West knows this is true. Those darn "diverse" and "vigorous" plants sure are clever, too. They have a charming way of disguising themselves as erosion and mud.

"Cows are also environmental protection machines."

And how could they not be when they're managed by today's socially-responsible, food conglomerate, factory farmers! Yes, on the old environmental friendliness scale herds of cows rank right up there with the B-l "Stealth" Bomber, Mount Pinatubo, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. Give them all Winnebagos for an even bigger "green" factor. Only Soviet atomic energy scientists could have come up with anything better.

Now, Words of Wisdom from Mr. Royko

"...veggie burgers, tofu burgers, seaweed burgers, cabbage burgers and other healthful delicacies. They could call them Twitburgers."

I suppose. Of course, if "they" were just a bit more mature and/or enlightened they might prefer to call them "Socially-Conscious Burgers," "Morally-Inspired Burgers," "creative," "visionary," "compassionate," or just plain "tasty." (This last adjective doesn't necessarily apply to the seaweed burger—I'll reserve judgment. And it assumes, of course, that "their" taste buds haven't already been deep fried in the last batch of hot grease out of Burger King or KFC.)

"America does not want a Twitburger. It prefers something it can really chomp on. Damn the cholesterol, full speed ahead."

For me, Mike's wartime imagery really captures the essence of the American eating experience. We can all join the Marlboro man—looking macho as hell in our hospital beds.

... "goofball"... "peepingTom"... "dimwits"... "public nags"... "common scold" ... "public nuisance"... "compulsive busybody" ... "intellectual gnat" ... "aging hippies"...

Choosing his words with the precision and accuracy of a skilled surgeon, Mr. Royko uses a number of adjectives to describe individuals and groups of people espousing vegetarianism and healthy eating. Of course Mr. R is merely demonstrating one of the golden rules of persuasive writing: When logic fails to advance your position, resort to name-calling. For obvious reasons, this technique is often used by those opposing the vegetarian cause.

"Now I must go have dinner. Steak tartare. That's raw beef, ground up. I prefer it on the hoof, but it's a chore chasing the critter."

Finally, at the end of his column, some levity! It's not too funny, though, if you're an individual of the vegetarian or bovine persuasion. I have to believe that despite the sarcasm Mr. Royko probably does eat the way he preaches, in which case he may not be around for too many more years of wit. It's a shame. If there's any justice, he'll be reincarnated as a cow.