Freedom-proud town wants to force restaurants to serve apple pie

[Fenris]

Boosters want Fayetteville to wave the flag

By Matt Leclercq
Staff writer

A marketing campaign to portray Fayetteville as America's most patriotic city suggests daily parades, tax breaks for flag-wavers and requiring all restaurants to serve apple pie.

Other concepts, pitched by the Fayetteville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, could turn Cumberland County into a sort of Disney World of American pride.

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The marketing initiative is the most extensive ever proposed to shed the rough-and- tumble "Fayettenam" characterization that has lingered since the Vietnam War. The plan cleared perhaps its most significant hurdle Monday when the City Council agreed to endorse the concept of trumpeting patriotism as an identity.

<...>

The initiative will get a formal unveiling Monday at the Crown Arena. The news conference is being billed as the "image resolves," a theme based on the Liberty Point Resolves of 1775 when Fayetteville's earliest patriots vowed to fight for freedom.

http://www.fayettevillenc.com/story.php?Template=local&Story=6853802

[flamingyouth]

1. What the hell?

That's just nuts.

[liberalhistorian]

5. Ironic would be a better word.

The irony of an initiative to show pride in freedom REQUIRING restaurants to serve a certain item is very rich, indeed. Besides, I don't know of any restaurant that does NOT serve at least one type of apple pie!

[jmowreader]

13. The irony is that this particular line item won't work

The whole item calls for a county law requiring all restaurants operating within Cumberland County to serve hot dogs and apple pie.

Fayetteville has four kinds of restaurants: chain eateries, locally-owned fine dining restaurants, locally-owned barbecue restaurants, and locally-owned fast food joints.

The chain eateries won't do it, and any effort to force them to do so falls under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

The locally-owned fine-dining establishments won't buy hot dogs to sell unless they get wind that Dubya Bush is going to eat there, and then they'll have to so they'll be sure to have something he likes.

The barbecue joints don't serve hot dogs now but most of them have some sort of apple pie. All of them have banana pudding, though, because that's the most popular dessert to go along with Eastern Carolina pulled pork.

The locally-owned fast food joints already have hot dogs and apple pie.

This law will be more full of loopholes than the Internal Revenue Code or the North Carolina Alcohol Beverage Code.

[Ellen Forradalom]

2. Mmmm, apple pie...just the thing after sushi

Notice that the initiative is to portray Fayetteville as patriotic, not freedom-loving. Big difference.

[patrice]

3. "If we can just look like we're patriotic, we will BE patriotic".

Everything is appearance, when you ask for description of more personally authentic understandings of "patriotism", most responses will be repeats of what others have said.

[Zomby Woof]

4. Reminds me of a Zappa story

(What doesn't?)

In his autobiography, he dispelled the myth that he ever "ate shit on stage", by saying "the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at the Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, NC". :D

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. And next comes the Great Loyalty Oath crusade.

You'll have to sign a loyalty oath before they GIVE you the apple pie. (Two, if you want it à la mode.)

And apple pie is English, anyway...

[Not_Giving_Up]

7. Tax breaks for flag wavers

They're so patriotic, they get paid to show it!

[Philosophy]

8. Mandatory daily parades?

[liberalhistorian]

14. Exactly!

That's just what I was thinking about. It's like the mandatory "minute of hate" in 1984. There's nothing at all wrong with genuine patriotism and with showing it, but you just CANNOT force it. That's totalitarianism.

[Bouncy Ball]

9. ....

:puke:

Finally, a reason to be glad to be in Texas.

Um, yeah, do those "daily parades." LOL! See how special they are after about day six.

ROFL! They will be ANNOYING AS HELL!

Actually, now that I think about it, Fayetteville might be inadvertently on to something here. OD on the fucking nationalism and people will lose their taste for it faster. Yeah!!!! Ram it down their throats 24/7 until they'd rather PUKE than see a parade or hear the national anthem.

Way to go! LOL! How ironic.

[Fenris]

10. Hey, I'll take any reason I can get.

:D

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. I'll bring APFELSTRUDEL!

And some French wine. After the paella, of course.

[jmowreader]

12. Kind of a dupe, but that's okay

I was on this shit when it first hit the paper, being that I live in this hellhole.

This town has decided to go after the Tourist Dollar with a vengeance, and to try to ditch the "Fayettenam" label they've had hanging around their neck like it was Coleridge's albatross.

They first tore down the 300 block of Hay Street--one-half of one of the more notorious strip-club districts in the Southeast. That didn't work.

Then they tore down Rick's Lounge, which was at one time the most famous strip joint on the East Coast, and built a police station where it once stood. That didn't work.

They went across the street, tore down all of the strip clubs over there--which really needed to be torn down--they were foul, man--and built the Airborne and Special Operations Museum. That didn't work either.

They even had a mock funeral where they wrote the word "Fayettenam" on a board and buried the board. You guessed it: it didn't work.

Basically, we're so starved for jobs that we'll take a bunch of $5.25 seasonal tourism jobs and brag about how wonderful it is that we've created all these new positions.

I wrote to the paper with my suggestion: ditch all this tourism bullshit (I didn't use that word, sorry) and get us some Merchants of Death in here. We need some armaments factories. This is the perfect place to set up a weapons plant--we've got a half-empty industrial park plus a lot of textile plants that are idle; we've got plenty of people to staff the plants; we've got a great place to test the new weapons; we've got one of the larger consumers of weaponry right down the street, hence no shipping costs; and we've got thousands of troops who'd give their left nut to be able to test new weapons for them. They'll even do it free--feed 'em and give 'em a full tank of gas, and these guys will be there bright and early to fire the new guns.

[mr blur]

15. What is it with apple pie?

It's not as if the US invented it. Now McDonalds I could understand...
(Hey, this isn't a dig at apple pie, which I love, nor at the US which, until recently, I've had great admiration for.)