Published on Medium.com in The Left is Right on 8/3/2024
Imagine going to a restaurant where the proprietor displays a selection of pies. When you ask about them, he tells you “They’re all the best, I guarantee it. We make them here in our own ovens with the absolutely best ingredients. For the apple pie I picked the apples fresh yesterday myself. Each one was perfect, no blemishes, the ripest, the sweetest!
“I personally stayed up all night and watched my beautiful chef, Juanita, bake them. She’s better than Julia Childs ever was, by the way. She graduated from the Cordon Bleu in France. And you know they only graduate one pie maker every four years. Very high standards there. I was lucky to hire her, because I only hire the best, but she comes really cheap because she loves working for me.
“Then for that chocolate pie over there, I personally flew down to the cocoa plantation I own in Columbia and harvested the cocoa pods myself. Each one was perfect, no blemishes, beautifully brown, and packed with beans. I was amazed at how excellent they were. They made the richest chocolate, which, by the way, won the Grand Prize in the annual chocolate competition in Belgium, for eight years running! I insist on only using the best ingredients, even if I have to grow them myself. Which, by the way, I do.
“So there’s absolutely no way you’re not going to love them, and you’ll love me too for treating you so good. Everything you eat in my restaurant is the best you’ll get anywhere. Hundred percent guaranteed.
“Just so you know, that other restaurant down the street doesn’t care like I do. I’ve even seen the owner there, his name is Joe, rooting around at the dumpster behind the Safeway. You know that’s where they put out all the old, bruised fruit and produce, and the out of date milk, all the damaged goods. I’ve even seen rats, huge rats, rats as big as hedgehogs rummaging through the stuff. But Joe doesn’t seem to care. I’m just saying. Maybe he does buy some good stuff too. I don’t know, but I’ve got my doubts. As for me, I always insist on the best. I’m Don by the way.”
So now the hungry pie lover has to choose. Which of the pies does he pick? But before choosing, does he try to scope out Joe’s place and look at his pie selection? Could it really be as bad as Don says? He probably doesn’t though, because after all Don is pretty convincing.
So the pie lover chooses the chocolate pie, which the waitress, Bonita, brings to his table, sets it down, and says, “Provecho!” Then under her breath, “Tener cuidado,” whatever that means. It’s only then that he does the sniff test and realizes that something is a little off with this pie. It’s got kind of the smell of a pasture about it. But, shoot, he goes ahead and eats it anyway. It’s all good ingredients after all. A couple of hours later he’s got a little indigestion and figures the next time he’ll try the apple pie.
But here’s the thing. If the hungry pie lover had been a little more discerning, he might have noticed the stains on Don’s apron. They looked a little chocolatey too, kind of like the pie, and they gave off a funny smell, kind of like the pie, come to think of it.
So maybe the next time he’ll go ahead and order the apple pie or maybe even try Joe’s place. Could it really be as bad as Don says? After all, they do compete for the same customers and Joe’s been around a long time. And he’s got a new partner, Kammy, who people are talking about being a good cook. So maybe Don is exaggerating. It could happen, right? All’s fair in love, war, and business, not to mention politics.
So the moral of the story: It’s the skeptic who knows a cow pie from a chocolate pie.