Klingon Crunchy
[Caleb Stegall  03/03 10:55 AM]

A reader responds thus (with minor editing to preserve the family-friendly atmosphere) to the laugh-in held in the Corner yesterday afternoon at the crunchies expense:

Over dinner, which I cooked but my wife made (along with 20 other dinners) this afternoon at Dish Delish, a real crunchy boon that isn’t too bobo, I got to thinking about why "crunchy" is a symbol that is easily tweaked as effete, pretentious and fake. Maybe this is because in the imagination of effete, pretentious, and fake people, they see the truth about themselves when they imagine how absurd they'd look if they did anything too "crunchy."

Authentic crunchy is some tough [stuff].

I had Jewish friends in high school in NJ who got sent to a kibbutz in Israel each summer. They farmed and learned how to handle an M-16. I don't think chicken coops would make them or their Israeli hosts laugh or sneer.

I remember churches in the 80s in upstate New York composed of farmers and townies who met in the old Grange building for services, knew its history, had outhouses and chickens and other livestock. That wasn't poverty; it was normal.

When I was in ROTC in college with most classmates being country boy NCOs from Ft. Bragg (Rangers, Special Forces, 82nd Airborne), I discovered military-crunchy. More like Klingon-crunchy. We always had a CSM/Command Sgt Major on the staff who oversaw the Ranger Challenge teams. A CSM is the NCO equivalent of a four-star general, except generals are often fat and have generally killed a lot fewer people with their bare hands. Imagine a guy who coolly brags about living off bugs and reptiles in Vietnam, Africa, and South America, dealing with chronic dysentery, and who at retirement age thrashes the young guys on 6 mile runs while he is smoking a cigarette. The most liberal character I met in this crowd was a "progressive populist" from NH. I think there would be uniform contempt among these guys for people who mock the quaintness of living off the land.