If you give a politician a cookie
(Inspired by Laura Numeroff’s books, with special thanks to my children Kristin and Noel)
If you give a politician a cookie, he will make a mental note to reprimand you later, on a Sesame Street show, for serving unhealthy foods. While he is chewing on his sixth cookie, he will ask you for a glass of organic milk. If you give him the milk, he will most likely spill some of it on your carpet. When he notices the stain, he will cite you for violating property maintenance codes. As soon as he is done with the paperwork, he will send FDA agents to raid the nearby Amish farm on suspicions that they have sold you unauthorized raw milk.
To prevent further spilling, he is going to ask you for a straw. While he is blowing bubbles in his glass, he may notice that the straw is plastic. This will inspire him to write a bill that requires you to recycle it. When he eats a few more cookies and drinks another quart of milk, he will need to visit your bathroom. There he may notice that your toilet uses more than the federally mandated amount of water to flush. This will remind him to increase your sewage tax. If he notices that you are out of kid’s dental floss, he may file a complaint with Social Services charging you with child endangerment.
When he gets out of the bathroom, he may notice that the place is littered with cookie crumbs. He will ask you to evacuate your home until EPA removes the bio-hazardous material from the floor. (He will solemnly pledge to PETA that the ants and cockroaches attracted by the crumbs will be relocated in the most humane manner and at the expense of the homeowner.) All this talking, thinking, and legislating will make him thirsty. So he will ask for a glass of milk. And chances are, if you get him the milk, he will want a cookie to go with it. . . .

















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back to top25 Comments to “If you give a politician a cookie”
Flat out funniest thing I’ve read on these boards. Who’s up for illustrating?
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Very, very funny. Excellent writing. Spot on!
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Alex,
You have definitely captured Numeroff’s writing style.
My kids love her books.
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Wow. That’s a pretty good illustration of what’s going on alright.
And we wonder why so many folks are out of work.
I read something recently that said there’s approximately 22 states worth of folks out of work. That’s a lot more unemployment than our politicians want to admit.
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I agree with Macrutabaga! That’s hilarious!
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Says it all.
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It’s good, but I gotta try anyway:
If a minister gives you a cookie, he will tell you that it is really a gift from god and that you can’t eat it yet–you must first bow down and thank him. In fact, he may tell you that you can’t even eat it today, since Tuesdays are fasting days. After you have duly waited, and then scarfed down the stale cookie, he will remind you that gluttony is a sin, your body is a temple and that you may just have committed the sin that will condemn you to everlasting fire. So, just in case, he will remind you that you’d better faithfully attend for the next 1,000 Sundays and tithe just a bit more each time…
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#8 Arcadia
If an atheist gives you a cookie he will say it came from a monkey who got it from a some primordial slime…
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Very funny, indeed!
I still wonder why people that have nothing to contribute to the true nature of the conversation, and who don’t agree with anything that the posts on this website say, still continue to waste their time reading and commenting. There’s plenty of blogs on the web, why spend so much time on one that you think is full of fundamentalist, religious drivel?
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What cult did you grow up in, Arcadia?
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#8-11
Just like the “alternative lifestyle” practitioners – looking desperately for some recognition of relevance; no matter the path it requires to achieve it.
Arcadia, m’friend, you can find all that you are really REALLY searching for in Jesus Christ, tho’ that’s the last (if ever) place you will look I fear — PITY!!
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Arcadia is just really, really angry at some unknown god she believes doesn’t exist. And the straw man Christian she rails against day and night doesn’t exist either. That’s a lot of time wasted fighting inner demons who have no counterpart in the real world.
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GREAT !!!
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Arcadia, the difference is that your story has nothing to do with reality. Evangelicals do not believe that committing a particular sin will condemn you to hell. Nor do we believe that committing one sin too many will do so. We also spend more time telling people how to avoid hell than telling them that they are going there.
We do not believe that there are certain days when you must fast, and if we did, a minister would not urge you to violate it and then condemn you for doing so.
We do believe that cookies are a gift from God, but we do not believe in forcing anybody to pray.
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Arcadia, the shift-g combination on your keyboard still isn’t working.
Ken Bland
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I agree with the consensus that Arcadia’s little parody isn’t even chuckle-worthy, but only because it doesn’t ring even a little bit true, even as a caricature. But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t stand to laugh a little at ourselves and at some of our idiosyncrasies. I’d love to see a much more clever and penetrating attempt, or maybe a few for various denominations. Anyone up to the task?
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Well done, Dr. T, and spot on. :–)
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The cookie analogy is similar to the illustrations used in Atlas Shrugged about the insanity of omnipotent moral busybodies who create a massive stifling bureaucracy in the name of making things better.
Did you see that a Senator from New York is trying to ban talking while walking?
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Wrong.
Ya’ll just inventing a rationalization for not giving Obama the cookie — the bag of cookes — he deserves.
Remember when Marvin Olasky complained, two weeks after Obama was inaugurated, “every time he opens his mouth, the stock market falls” ?
When GWB lifted off of the Capitol for his final ride to the ranch at the end of his mind, the DOW was at 7,949 and my retirement account was down 40%. Now, for the first time since Republican policies plunged us into a once a century (twice, at the most) economic disaster, the DOB has reached 12,000.
Obama can eat the whole bag, drop crumbs, and spill his milk, and I’ll bring him another jumbo pack.
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Howdy
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Wrong.
Ya’ll just rationalization for not giving Obama the cookie — the bag of cookes — he deserves.
Remember when Marvin Olasky complained, two weeks after Obama was inaugurated, “every time he opens his mouth, the stock market falls” ?
When GWB lifted off of the Capitol for his final ride to the ranch at the end of his mind, the DOW was at 7,949 and my retirement account was down 40%. Now, for the first time since Republican policies plunged us into a once a century (twice, at the most) economic disaster, the DOB has reached 12,000.
Obama can eat the whole bag, drop crumbs, and spill his milk, and I’ll bring him another jumbo pack.
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Scroop, nobody mentioned Obama but you.
Though, come to think of it…
Oh, yeah, and you’re taking things out of context. What Mr. Olasky said was true at the time.
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Scroop Moth, President Obama wants to take my cookies and spread them around.
How dare you have a retirement fund. Everybody knows your supposed to depend on the government when you are old.
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…and that politician will take your cookies and hand them out to those that had said “not I” to helping make those cookies. He’ll also try to ban their sale at school bake sales (oh wait, that school bake sale comment sounds too crazy to be part of a child’s book.)
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