What is that -- Tobasco Sauce? Pointy-headed Liberal . . . .

What is the obsession Neo-cons have with what normal, non-Neo-cons eat? While stumping in Philadelphia for the '04 election, then presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry took flack for a "serious" foodie faux pas by ordering (gasp!) a cheese steak sandwich with (wait for it . . . ) Swiss cheese on it.  And just last week Sean "The Baby Jesus" Hannity made fun of President Obama for requesting a hamburger with spicy mustard on it.  Sean wannabes quickly echoed the refrain, implying that only a liberal elitist would have such unusual tastes.

Now some are suggesting that Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor's love of her native Puerto Rican food might somehow influence her decisions on the bench.  OMFG. "For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir -- rice, beans and pork -- that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events," Sotomayor said in a 2003 commencement speech at Pace Law School.

Her food preferences have prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo -- pigs' tongue and beans -- would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench. No, it's not a joke.

"It's pretty disturbing," said Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice (a right-wing "advocacy" group, getting all a-flutter about Sotomayor's food memories). "It's one thing to say that occasionally a judge will, despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality." OMFG x2

What did Levey and the other bland-palate pundits have to say about Dubya's dietary preferences?  Bush regularly fed on kiddie food and nobody said a peep.  I guess it feels safer to them to have a political leader who munches on cheeseburger pizza, peanut-butter-n-honey sammies, and tater tots than something as exotic as Swiss cheese, spicy mustard, or (save us all!) pig's feet.  They can understand kid- food; it fits their mentality.  Raisin Brain is just a regular guy who eats like a toddler and probably has a cholesterol level approaching 400.  Hey, but I'd trust him with the launch codes over that French-looking, fancy-cheese eatin' guy.

But I digress.  Is it an infantile oral obsession that has the right-wing fixated on what foods enter non-Neo-con mouths?  Take Rush-the-Oxymoron. If his mouth isn't moving then there's something in it, whether he's sucking on an oily cigar with greedy gusto, or vacuuming up any morsel of food that falls within a three-yard radius of his massive meat hooks, or popping whatever pharmaceutical his "delivery" person dropped off right before show time. 

And it was the appropriately named Candy Crowley who first attacked Kerry's non-traditional cheese selection.  She should be more in tune with the material she selects to report; when the piece aired on CNN, Kerry looked like he had survived a famine Ms. Crowley had caused.

The neo-Conservative Limbots are as fixated as four-year-olds and they are terrified of diversity of any kind, be it skin color, cultural heritage, or food preferences.  I hope the neo-Cons continue to attack Sotomayor for her love of her native cuisine because that's when their stupidity and immaturity really shines. 

I say bring it on!  Fruitcakes.