No Soup For You! Obamaville Debunks Another Obama Idea!

by James Taranto

The New York Post has another hilarious dispatch from the People's Republic of Obamaville (or, as it was known before the revolution, Zuccotti Park).

It seems "the Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a 'counter' revolution yesterday--because they're angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for 'professional homeless' people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters."For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep's-milk-cheese salad.

They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.

To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.

It reminds one of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi: "No soup for you!" But it's also reminiscent of President Obama's comments noted yesterday: "The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, 'you are on your own. If you get sick, you're on your own. If you can't afford college, you're on your own. If you don't like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you're on your own.' That's not the America I believe in. It's not the America you believe in."

Yet to judge by their actions, the denizens of Obamaville have come to believe in it very quickly. They selfishly feast on spaghetti bolognese and sheep's milk, but when the truly needy show up, the cupboard is bare. "No soup for you! You're on your own, freeloader." Apparently it's the bottom 1% against whom they're waging class war.

Of course we are being half-facetious here. In truth, the Obamavillians are learning why Obama is wrong--why socialism doesn't work. A society that makes a virtue of dependency ultimately encourages freeloading and grifting. The instinct to prevent it is a healthy one. A lot has been written about the similarities and differences between Obamaville and the Tea Party, and here is one: Whereas the latter arose out of the instinct to reward self-reliance and discourage dependency, the former is having it awakened by an encounter with the real world.

Will Obama ever have such an encounter with the real world? Probably not until he's been out of office for at least 10 years. There were no reports that any homeless people or ex-cons showed up asking for dinner at the million-dollar fund-raiser where he made the sanctimonious remarks quoted above. If they had, the Secret Service would have told them they were on their own.

Your thoughts?