Michelle Obama's depressing garden

The White House announced Thursday that First Lady Michelle Obama will supervise the planting of a vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House.

"Such a White House garden has been a dream of noted California chef Alice Waters, considered a leader in the movement to encourage consumption of locally grown, organic food," reported the Associated Press.

"To have this sort of 'victory' garden, this message goes out that everyone can grow a garden and have free food," Ms. Waters said.

Well, that's one message.

Another message is that the White House, the seat of executive power in the most advanced economy in the history of the world, is now modeling subsistence techniques.

"Victory gardens were vegetable gardens planted during the world wars with encouragement from the government to make sure there was enough food for civilians and the troops," the AP reported. "Waters says her family had such a garden."

In America, where citizens have grown up expecting that grocery stores will always be fully stocked with food, and that the U.S dollar will always be valuable enough to buy it, a vegetable garden on the South Lawn may seem like a wholesome, funky, 1970s-style celebration of health food.

But in other parts of the world, where privation is commonplace, the picture of a vegetable garden on the South Lawn may be seen as something else:

A living symbol of the coming collapse of the U.S. economy.

That's a message the United States should not be sending.

Subsistence is nothing to brag about.


Copyright 2009

.