How the Kraft-Heinz merger will revive the great hot dog culture wars

Oh, good, Kraft and Heinz are merging. Nothing bad happens when German-sounding industrial concerns streamline. I love this. Add Krupp – go on, look at the panel inside an elevator – and we can have a western front of assaults on taste and human decency.

I know this sounds extreme, but as a political writer, I know what happens when something German-sounding (or even resembling) happens to the status quo. It’s Munich! It’s always Munich!

Here’s the thing: Hitler loved ketchup. I can’t prove that, just as I can’t prove that Iran, immigrants and a graduated income tax are going to destroy America tomorrow, but I know it. I feel it in my buns. Which is how the French pronounce bones before giving up and handing munitions to people splattering them with ketchup bottles or Panzer fire. Whichever. I’m not looking this crap up in a book.

Anyway, a merger of Kraft and Heinz presents an existential threat to the greatest American creation besides the antibiotic and the sext. I’m speaking of the hot dog.

There are countless ways to profane the hot dog sandwich, and most of those profanations have predictably emanated from dense urban areas where people can experiment with food and beards that repel human or sexual tolerance. But there is one offense that spreads across this nation like a sliced-open wrist, red seeping through the map and any concept of life or hope.

Obviously, I’m talking about ketchup.

This Kraft-Heinz merger only portends the “ketchupifaction” of a formerly great, tangy nation. It enables and accelerates the chicken-shit tendency of our lesser citizens to slog a line of red culinary cowardice into an already sugar-saturated bun carrying a nitrate-infused tube of salted meat.

Go ahead, spread surrender.

Now, mustard – mustard is a challenging condiment. It can be rough- or smooth- grained. It can be brutally acidic or ameliorated by honey or booze. Its complexity knows no bounds. Ketchup, on the other hand, is red smear for children.

Any more Heinz ketchup, and America is doomed.

Ketchup is a comfort food for people who never aged past wearing disposable pants, using fat pencils and shoving their dirty fists in their mouths. You ever notice how toddlers love it? There’s a reason for that. These are people for whom a menu more complex than “chicken tenders” and “hamburger” is alienatingly complex. As soon as the unfamiliar might threaten to intrude on the palate, it’s time to fartingly squeeze some Heinz onto a paper plate until any other flavor has been smothered.

Ketchup is what happens when a people find tang too uncomfortable. “Hey, it’s got tomato and vinegar, that’s weird, right?” Don’t worry, it’s full of molasses or syrup (probably) and an assload of sugar (yes). Great, I was just in danger of not eating something sweet and completely gutless.

I’m not fond of apocalyptic language – leave that to the sweating oil smirk shaped like Ted Cruz – but this merger will destroy the last vestiges of taste in America. It will make everything ketchup, and ketchup sucks.

There are tolerable exceptions. Piles of fries. A boring hamburger. But this merger presages a ubiquitous and gross overuse. It presages a fall. Go ahead, put ketchup on your food, and put on a diaper.