School Lunch Program gets lynched

A conversation heard in the Oval Office.

"I just don't know what the American people will think."

"But we've been working on this for months; we have the perfect formula."

"But it can't be us."

"Why not? I'm not letting some Republican take credit for this."

"It's not about that."

"Then what?"

"We just can't give the media any more talking points. Not one like this."

"Is it the calories? The fruit servings? What am I missing?"

"Mrs. Obama, with all due respect, *we* can't be the administration that made schools White Milk only."

"Oh dear God. What have we done."

"We'll have to cut everything out of chocolate milk, without cutting out the chocolate. I mean, we have to appear to give equal opportunity to all colors of milk. We have to."

"Sodium. That's in chocolate milk. We'll cut that."

"Fat!"

"Yes, fat. And sugar! We'll cut fat and sugar and sodium, and they'll have no choice but to choose the more superior milk."

"Words, Michelle, watch your words."

"Oh I am horrible at being the First Lady."

"No, you've just been given an impossible task: make millions of children eat well, but not so well they'd want to run for office, and then pick up just enough of the tab to keep parents and schools dependent on us. It's impossible."

"Something will have to go."

"Should we start charging for it?"

"No, then there's no reason for kids to eat our meals."

"And we lose control."

"Right. Something else. It's so obvious, but I just can't see it."

"You mean the 'eating well' part? You want to cut that?"

"Ahh yes, great idea! That solves our problems!"

"But we can't be the administration that made kids fat."

"They won't know it was us."

"How?"

"Formulas. Math. Numbers. Portions. Servings. Calories. Counting. Americans are horrible at that stuff. You haven't actually seen any thin Jenny Craig-ers, have you?! Oh I crack myself up. And we'll put it on the school administrations to figure it out."

"Ooh, and we'll punish them if they mess up!"

"Yes, and we'll reward them by purchasing through the USDA--they'll package and portion it so they don't have to do any counting."

"But won't they connect that back to us?"

"Bah! The nutrition labels will always add up; it'll just be on severely processed food. I think we still have 50,000 tons of food reserves from the 40s. We could go through that first, to build up our surplus."

"Oh Michelle, you are HOT! This is GENIUS! But what if someone notices?"

"Oh now you're the funny one. Who would notice?!"

"Parents?"

"Are you kidding me!? Have you BEEN to a school in the last 20 years? Remember the Internal Revenue Service?! Teehee. We've got those parents working double shifts just to survive, oh--and to pay for healthcare. OH I LOVE THE IRONY!"

"So parents don't check in on their kids? Don't eat lunch with their kids anymore?"

"Not a chance. Even if they wanted to, we've got all sorts of hoops for them to jump through now. Most give up."

"Well this is pretty incredible, Mrs. First Lady, ma'am. I mean, here we were just going to remove Chocolate Milk and bring awareness and reality to the healthy lunch program, but when we couldn't be THE Administration to make schools White Milk only--you found a way to solve a bunch of other problems."

"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."

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