Feeling dissatisfied with your fortune cookie fortunes? There's a reason! Turns out the fortunes we grew up on are deemed too provocative for kids in today's politically correct world. Maybe that explains the mess that today's grown-ups have gotten us into. So we're asking: What fortunes did today's leading conservatives get that would explain their behavior today?
In these troubled times -- the fate of the world economy in the balance, FOX News people running out of oxygen calling insurance exchange Web glitches a "train wreck" -- it would seem natural to turn to the world's most widely-read author for some sage advice.
No, we're not talking about Shakespeare -- or Jesus or Dr. Seuss, or even that woman who writes those dinosaur-on-human pornography novels. We're talking about the man who writes the fortunes in fortune cookies -- those yummy after-meal morsels with their hidden slips of paper holding immortal nuggets of wisdom and insight. Wonton Food, the largest manufacturer of those cookies, makes four million a day right here in the good ol' USA. Four million! When the guy who writes them claims to be the most widely-read author on the planet, he's not kidding.
But it turns out: the future ain't what it used to be. As was made clear in the venerable Wall Street Journal this week, people haven't been able to rely on their cookies for a decent prediction in years. Why not? Well, it seems some Americans weren't pleased with what their cookies were telling them, and so, like any good American, they shut down the government complained! And got those "problematic" fortunes removed.
At first, we had to admire anyone who took their cookies so seriously that they could ever be offended by the hidden fortune. Just what were these problematic predictions these cookies were serving up? Were these people being told to jump off a bridge? Sell their kidneys? Call 411 for numbers they could easily look up in the book?
No, it turns out that it was fortunes such as "Love is in the near future" that were freaking these people out. Really! As innocuous as that sounds to us, it was considered too provocative by people who didn't want their prepubescent children getting any funny ideas.
Ah, yes: curious children. Is there any length some parents won't go to protect their kids from the world? Why not just educate them with Texas schoolbooks if they don't want their kids to ever learn anything? And leave our cookies be? No, instead, here we are, facing an uncertain future -- and our cookies are offering no help. Things just got that much worse. And you gotta admit: they were pretty bad already, thanks to those lunatic Republicans in Congress who could demand the blood of your first-born child and whine when you're not willing to "compromise" about giving it.
And much of the media, of course, is playing right into it, presenting the D.C. debacle as if it were the equal fault of everyone involved. Who will blink first? Will Obama negotiate? How long will Washington play the blame game?
We're sick of this. We all know where the fault really lies.
That's right: With the cookies. We may never know what all those "provocative" fortunes that got excised said, but we have a few ideas about what some of them might have been -- and, more importantly, who got them as a fortune. We now have proof that people who are afraid of educating our children take these cookie fortunes pretty seriously. So we're asking for your help. Tell us: What fortune do YOU think inspired some of the biggest troublemakers in America?
Match the conservatives with the fortune-cookie fortunes that inspired them:
Click here to take the poll!