He Picked the Wrong Cereal!

Yesterday was not Larry Krueger's day.

The San Francisco talk show host stumbled upon not one, but two new ways of offending people and will certainly lose his job as soon as the caterwauling becomes shrill enough or congress gets involved--whichever comes first.

In the same commentary where he coined the ethnic slur, "Caribbean" (see previous post), he tried to improve upon the common metaphor, "his brain is mush," used to describe someone who doesn't think clearly.

Instead of the word "mush," Krueger got fancy and used the actual name of an actual mush, Cream of Wheat, when describing Giants' Manager Felipe Alou's brain.

He picked the wrong cereal.

Cream of Wheat packages have the picture of a smiling black chef offering up a bowl of steaming cereal to entice us. Apparently Krueger saying, "You have a manager in Felipe whose mind has turned to Cream of Wheat" is some sort of code for "Felipe Alou looks like that subservient black fellow on the box of Cream of Wheat.

Good thing he didn't use Count Chocula.

He could simply have said that Alou was a Fruit Loop--that's a cereal. And come to think of it, Fruit Loops have the advantage of being many different colors. They have diversity, yeah! You could call into question a persons mental processes and imply that they are part of the rainbow coalition all at the same time! Not to mention that a toucan is part of the rain forest.

It seems that Mr. Krueger needs to attend some sort of sensitivity class for serial offenders. Maybe local supermarkets could expand their businesses by conducting such classes right there in the cereal aisle. Certainly if you are going to be in radio you would need to know all the various connotations of foods in your grain group.

I wonder what would it have meant if he used Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal as his mush of choice. Wouldn't it be more offensive for a Dominican to be called an old white guy with a wig?

Somehow I don't think anyone would have even noticed if that was the cereal he picked.

Update: Surprisingly, Larry Krueger was fired today.