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SAVE AMERICA: BAN FLUFF. And here I was earlier this morning complaining that there's nothing worth blogging about when Jacob Sullum comes to the rescue:
A Massachusetts legislator, allegedly representing the very district where Fluff was invented, wants to ban the stuff from public school cafeterias. "A Fluff sandwich as the main course of a nutritious lunch just doesn't fly in 2006," said state Sen. Jarrett T. Barrios, who was outraged when his son, a third-grader, requested Fluff at home. "It seems a little silly to have an amendment on Fluff, but it's called for by the silliness of schools offering this as a healthy alternative in the first place." Barrios did not explain the nutritional advantages of jelly.As people may recall from my turn as Josh Marshall's understudy, I don't like peanut butter, and peanut butter detractors throughout the nation have long felt oppressed by America's love affair with the stuff. The fluffernutter sandwich was one of the banes of my existence as a child. So while a Fluff ban will sadly fail to address the underlying issues, it is, perhaps, a step in the right direction. On the other hand, friends will recall that one of my endless series of complaints about my stint in Massachusetts was that it seems to be the state where everything is illegal so this isn't helping.
At any rate, during that aforementioned stint, Barrios was my state representative, and during that time I worked in a minor capacity for his state senate campaign. The man has crazy charisma and a Chuck Schumer-esque nose for getting himself press based on the most random issues imaginable, and I semi-seriously believe that he'll be President someday, though others have tried to convince me that nominating a Massachusetts liberal who's also gay and Latino wouldn't be a huge improvement on the Kerry/Dukakis model. I actually think this is wrong and charisma is king, but maybe Big Fluff will manage to strangle his political career in its cradle.
--Matthew Yglesias