Wild Cherry, Wild Myths

In an attempt to reform my own personal care of my own personal health (before some government bureaucrat comes between me and myself) I have been using yogurt instead of doughnuts to stave off the 10 a.m. hunger attacks. I eat Yoplait fruit flavors, but I often get sick of the artificial sweetener taste – except when I eat the Very Cherry, with that “cherry” flavor that does not exist in nature: the cherry flavor that brings back the sticky, red sweetness of Smith Brothers cough drops.

Smith Brothers cough drops were an important part of the health care system we had when I was a child. It was a system firmly based in the free enterprise, capitalist economy. We knew that, if we got sick, Vicks, Smith Brothers, St. Joseph and others were there to restore our health without relying on the demonistic insurance industry or the socialistic government.

Now, as I understand it, what is being debated in Congress is not actually health care reform but reform of our system of access to health care. This is not limited to providing watered-down, government cough drops and vapo-rub to the millions uninsured. Republicans have also revealed that the Democrats plan would also introduce health care rationing (no. 6 under "coverage"), a restrictive element that does not exist under our current system of supply, demand and insurance funding.

A more disturbing change embedded in the current Democratic health care reform bill is the provision that requires old people to end their lives early (see fact # III) Again, this is troubling because that practice belongs in the free market, with tobacco and fast food companies, not with some communist government stooges.

These types of un-American policies are to be expected from a President unfamiliar with our culture because he was born in another country - Obama was born in Kenya, this I know, because the Birthers told me so. (see fact I) They have not yet produced a birth certificate to prove it, but I have faith that they will soon.

Getting back to Smith Brothers, these men played a little-known but important role in our economy beyond their selfless dedication to curing scratchy throats. In doing my research on them I found this website featuring one of their ads. The blogger here says, “The Smith Brothers have first names! I never knew that.” Of course they had first names, they were “Trade” and “Mark” as indicated on the packaging. This is the origin of the legally registered product names we now call “trademarks.” (Similarly an early edition of the Brothers Karamazov listing their first names, Copy and Right, on the cover led to the legal form of protection for written material.)

Coincidentally the first ad on that site is one imploring parents to protect their child’s right to keep and bear Daisy rifles. Sadly, 50 years later the Obama administration has taken away our BB guns, claiming we would put our eye out (see fact XII). Once more, the visible hand of socialism has smacked the invisible hand of capitalism and robbed us of freedoms in a way that, back in the 40s, happened only in isolated autocratic places in our country.

The third ad on that page is about Ronnie Morlock who, after being voted the most popular boy because of his shoes, disappeared from the face of the earth. I believe Ronnie became despondent when Thom McAn stopped making their shoes in America. Morlock undoubtedly moved to some other country like Canada where they still manufacture their own goods and they aren’t being ruined by government health care and gun control.

A long day of calling Rush Limbaugh to complain about these atrocities has made my throat raw. Oh, for a box of Smith Brother cherry flavored lozenges!