Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.
If you EVER doubt that... may I present Exhibit A: Tender, delicious, Obama Fingers...with a hint of curry!
I don't know what drugs these guys were on when they green lighted this product.
I don't know what culinary con artist convinced them Americans like their fast food with curry.
I don't know what they fed the focus groups who tested the product.
I don't know what the ad agency was smoking with when they rolled out the concept.
But the icing on this cake is the spin Sprehe's sales manager, Judith Witting, gave this story in a recent interview. I'm not making this up. I'm not that creative.
"We noticed that American products and the American way of eating are trendy at the moment," Judith Witting, sales manager for Sprehe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Americans are more relaxed. Not like us stiff Germans, like (Chancellor Angela) Merkel."
OK...first off... American's have always been trendy. Second off... we're not relaxed... we're just celebrating St. Patrick's Day. Third off... we're willing to forget George's whole Merkel-groping thing if you are.
Personally, I think there is more to this story than she's admitting. The idea, she claimed, was to get in on the Obama-mania which is continuing to grip Germany.
The word "fingers" in the name refers to the fact that it is a finger food. "It's like hotdogs," Witting said. "No one would ever think they are actually from dogs."
I am so glad we got that cleared up. You have to admire the sales manager for her savvy. She knows how to size up a potential resistance point and attack it head on. I can see why she gets paid the big bucks. All those liberal vegans gotta be shut down before they can attack the product with their Soylent Green conspiracy theories.
You gotta hand it to these captains of industry. Always keeping an eye out for new opportunities. They have their fingers on the pulse of the economy. I realize a lot of people have been making money on Obama's likeness, but it would never have occurred to sell off actual parts of Obama. I'm embarrassed to admit I saw Will Smith in Seven Pounds and I Am Legend, but this never crossed my mind. Even if I had thought of that, I would never have had the audacity to see the potential. I would have suggested a kidney or two, maybe some bone marrow, a few pints of blood every now and again. Hell, renting him out to foreign contributors like he was the Lincoln Bedroom might even be a good idea once in awhile. But this....
Even though I am reluctant to question these financial wizards, I wonder how much market penetration they thought they'd pick up with 10 fingers. That's more of an Ebay item than a mass market product. The only thing I can figure is this must be why Gov. Sanford of South Carolina turned down the stimulus money. He is not going to enable our descent towards a "savory-based economy." On the bright side, maybe this means Obama is The One, and since we're killing the oceans ... he's going to perform his miracle with fingers instead of fish. Alternatively, he might just be one of the Lizard People...or the guy in Florida is right and he is an alien... which explains his ability to grow the fingers back after they chop them off, batter them up and drop them in the fry-o-later.
One thing in the Der Spiegel story was hard to swallow. I couldn't stomach their typical left-liberal media political correctness when they editorialized:
For Americans in Germany, though, there is a risk that the product might be seen as racially insensitive. Fried chicken has long been associated with African-Americans in the US -- naming strips of fried chicken after the first black president could cause some furrowing of brows.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I don't know what kind of "Americans" they have in Germany, but no real American is going to associate Obama Fingers with black people. Any fool can tell the Obama Fingers are made of tender white meat.