Dec 6, 2013 5 min read

Did you know that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are considered racist?

Or that former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum was planning to divorce his wife?

Both stories are related, and neither one of them is true.

Racist PB&J sandwiches offer an opportunity I was hungry to write – politicizing food. I thought the story was true.

And mentioning Santorum, whose name has a dual meaning, is always a good way to grab readers.

The liberal intelligencia openly mock me too, because they don’t like what I eat.

I’ll admit, even if I could afford organic milk that costs about $6 a gallon, I wouldn’t buy any.

Like many families, I have to stretch a dollar to buy groceries for my three small kids who are eating me and my wife out of house and home. That means buying what we can afford rather than scarfing up the latest hot trend.

Some Republicans blame me for accepting this reality.

I hate when people politicize food.

I got angry when I saw a story on the Internet about how some edu-crat from Oregon calls PB&J sandwiches racist.

The story went viral. Had to be true…

I then went on a rant to my wife about how foodies decry shrimp made in China because it contributes to global warming or how some smug elitists hate burger chains because of obesity.

Really, politicization of food is just another way for some folks to put others down.

If I can afford $5 worth of Chinese frozen shrimp purchased from a mega big box store, then it must be a special occasion.

And feeding a family of five on McDonalds is not as cheap as you would think, so that too is an occasion.

The PB&J story said the school district spent $500,000 to enact this latest form of politically correct nonsense.

I wanted this PB&J story to be true, so I could write a phenomenal column. I really did, but alas it was not to be.

Per my journalist’s (not unpaid blogger) training, I checked the sources – who were not very credible conservative leaning websites. I saw that Fox News ran with a story, which gave me a glimmer of hope that it might still be true. Then I saw that Fox News posted an updated version of the story with a statement from that Oregon school district along with a link to a news website where some real journalists did some fact checking.

The PB&J story had only the slightest kernel of truth — and that’s being generous.

PB&J sandwiches are not racist.

And that’s what brings me to Santorum.

A few months ago, liberal friends of mine — yes I have them too — were gloating online about how the former Republican presidential candidate was getting divorced because of homosexuals. Santorum is well known for his sentiments involving homosexuals.

“Unfortunately the homosexuals have ruined my marriage. Every year, more and more of them get married, and every year the relationship with my wife gets worse,” Santorum is reported to have told the Daily Currant. “Ever since the Supreme Court struck down DOMA, we’ve been sleeping in separate rooms. It’s like I don’t even know who she is anymore. This is what the gays want: to destroy the institution of marriage. We won’t be the last.”

Much like my PB&J story, many people — some with brains — thought this story to be true.

The source was the Daily Currant — an online left-leaning satirical newspaper. That this fact was missed by some mainstream media outlets was astounding.

It would be easy to blast the Internet or tell people to be skeptical of the New York Times vs. Fox News. Not me.

Instead, I encourage people to read wild stories about the validity of how President Obama is a muslim who was not born on American soil. Or how President Bush lied and kids died; Haliburton or Monsanto’s corporate greed; who really killed JFK; or the Moon landing conspiracy.

Why? Because if people discover the truth behind all these conspiracies, like I did with PB&J sandwiches and Santorum, then maybe I’ll look good, as well as the other reporters at the Herald-Standard, by comparison.

I think we try to tell all sides of a story – not just those parts that some folks want to be true.

Who am I kidding? All I want is something to eat, and a PB&J sandwich is looking really good right now. Of course, so does fried chicken and watermelon. I must be a racist.

Miles Layton is a staff writer for the Herald-Standard. He can be reached by email at jmlayton@heraldstandard.com