Posted on Wed, Jul. 28, 2004Meltdown over a burning issue
Ex-grocer sets ice cream ablaze in protest of 'PantsonFire-Mobile'
By Sara Cunningham
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
MIDWAY - You'd think a good scoop of Cherry Garcia, Caramel Sutra or Phish Food would transcend politics.
Chuck Bradley doesn't think so. Yesterday he set fire to almost 30 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream to protest statements by the compa-ny's co-founder, Ben Cohen, who has publicly called President Bush a liar.
The pints were taken from the Midway Corner Grocery, which Bradley owned for 21 years before he sold it to one of his sons.
The protest drew an amused response from Cohen.
"What a waste of some really great ice cream," Cohen said in an e-mail statement yesterday.
"I didn't think you could burn ice cream," he added.
You can ... sort of.
Bradley and 20 or so people watched the pile of pints turn into a river of sweet-smelling gooey sludge.
The political statement Bradley just couldn't swallow involves Cohen's group True Majority ACTION and its "PantsonFire-Mobile," a visual protest of the Bush administration.
The traveling display shows Bush with fake flames coming out of his pants.
Bradley said the display was "un-American."
"We've got a great country -- thousands of men have died so we can stand here today and speak our minds but not bad-mouth the leader of the free world," Bradley said.
Cohen said the burning Bush is a take on the "liar, liar, pants on fire" adage, which he says Bush earned for the war in Iraq, and his policies on tax cuts and the economy.
"The PantsOnFire-mobile is about a schoolyard taunt, not a burning effigy," he said. "The idea is to use humor to make the point that this president doesn't tell the truth."
International conglomerate Unilever bought Ben & Jerry's in 2000 and spokeswoman Chrystie Heimert said co-founders Cohen and Jerry Greenfield don't speak politically for the company.
"When they speak, they do so as private citizens or representatives of other organizations," Heimert said.
In her six years with Ben & Jerry's, she said this was the first time she had heard of anyone burning ice cream.
"But I guess it sounds like he was exercising his rights, too," Heimert said.
Exercising those rights means customers won't find any Chunky Monkey on the Midway grocery's shelves anytime soon.
The Corner Grocery, at 301 North Winter Street, will now sell Haagen-Dazs, which Bradley views as "more American."
Charlene Harris brought her two sons,-Cheney, 2, and Jay, 4, to the protest after learning about it from a Scott County Republican Party e-mail.
Harris said she was happy to bring her children to the ice cream burning, but she knows they didn't understand what was happening.
"It was kind of hard to explain to them why the ice cream was bad," she said. "We do support the president, but they like ice cream."
It's good to see the right have their own wacky protests sometimes.
― Dale the Panopticalist (cprek), Wednesday, 28 July 2004 18:01 (twenty-one years ago)