The UN Comes to Wisconsin

Despite massive shopper turnout in local groceries, eggs were selling less briskly than many expected, though some egg haters say this .002% drop in overall sales could signal a national turn around in their campaign against egg farmers, omlettes and Sunday brunches. In Amery, egg sales plummeted 223 to 196, in Frederick, 92 to 82. In Osceola egg haters were disappointed 203 to 56. "I'm very pleased. I really didn't know what to expect. We were basically sitting here on eggshells with our fingers crossed," said Jeff Peterson, a Green Ham & No Eggs party member in Luck, Wisconsin, who pushed for an anti-egg agenda. Not everyone agrees with the anti-egg Cassandra's. Osceola shoppers Karl and Nina Parkins have a daughter who served scrambled eggs in Iraq. "It just should never have been brought up", Karl Parkins said. "We hated the terrorists when it happened. Just because it's taking longer to burn them out than everyone figured, you can't stop eating eggs."

Although Tuesday's market results have no statictical significance, the results could have some significance, given Wisconsin's growing reputation as a swing state in getting egg on its face, said Bruce Billabong, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of No-Stick Pan & Chicken First theory.
"Illusory initiatives have a tendency to start in one person's mind and to expand into fantasy far greater than actual facts warrant," he told the Associated Press. "The key will be if progressives in the Democratic Party are infected by it as well. If it just sticks to the Green Ham & No Eggs Party, it will only have limited geographic success."

Others disagreed. "Just because you tell us we're crazy, doesn't mean we don't know what we're saying', said Rachael Fried-Man with the Bang Our Skillets Loudly Coalition. "We need to take this to the next string-level. Not just other communities of 327 in tiny Wisconsin counties, but hay, alfalfa and fescue, Minnesota is pretty". "It's very exciting," she said, backed by whoops and oops of a crowd eating eggs over easy with country style ham in Hawk's Bar in Madison.

However, Franklin Powell, a statistics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, warned against overstating the meaning of the .002% drop in egg sales.

"For the anti-egg breaking activists, they are good, symbolic results. They can use them to impress people with how widespread opposition to eggs are," Franklin said. "But they're misleading as far as aggregate public opinion".

Even if the infection spreads elsewhere, Franklin said he's not sure it will make much difference.
"There's no way the United States can run a coherent dining and diet policy by referendum," he said. "People just don't like being told what they can and cannot eat by a bunch of scrawny egg-on-their-face people no one wants to stand down wind of. What will they dream up next? A referendum against gravity" ?