RALEIGH – Finally, a column about the merits of declaring a National Rutabaga Week.
What vegetable is more deserving of an official week of commemoration than the nutritious rutabaga? A cooked, 3.5 ounce serving of juicy rutabaga contains 35 percent of the recommended daily allowance for vitamin C. Its stolidly bland taste reflects solid American values, with a particular emphasis on our often-overlooked Scandinavian heritage (since “rutabaga” is derived from the Swedish word “rotabagge,” and in other parts of the world the vegetable is known as the Swede turnip). Finally, since the rutabaga apparently resulted from crossing the white turnip with green cabbage, it is obviously a perfect symbol of polychromatic multiculturalism.
No doubt the vast majority of readers, having slogged their way through the preceding paragraph, are at this point feeling a certain irritation. Imagine that my paean to the lowly rutabaga continued for many more paragraphs, complete with horticulture tips, recipes, and prominent literary and poetic references. Would your irritation give way to anger? And further, what if I was giving a speech on the rutabaga, a speech you had to sit through because you had important business to transact after I finished? Would your anger give way to an uncontrollable and malicious desire to throw things at me? (I would recommend the rutabaga, by the way, as its shape and heft puts it far above other vegetables in accuracy and bruising potential.)
There isn’t really a serious proposal on the table for National Rutabaga Week. But Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James has threatened to introduce it, tongue planted firmly in cheek, in response to a brouhaha about the proliferation of official county proclamations claiming an inordinate amount of attention and time at commission meetings. As Carrie Levine reported in The Charlotte Observer:
At its August meeting, the board spent over an hour adopting four proclamations. Herewith:
• It designated Aug. 25 “Men Taking Children to School on Their First Day.”
• It designated Aug. 23 “Women’s Equality Day.”
• It declared Aug. 13-20 to be “Homeless World Cup Soccer Week.”
• It adopted a proclamation supporting the use of four positive four-letter words. Proponents then handed out a list of 49 such words, including “able,” “best,” “care” and “zest.”
I don’t mean to pick on Mecklenburg County – at least not today. Nor do I mean to slight the intentions of sponsoring commissioners such as Jennifer Roberts, as it happens a good friend of mine. In local governments across North Carolina, and indeed in North Carolina state government itself, politicians have simply gotten carried away with honorifics and proclamations. For example, we now have, among many others, an official state reptile (the Eastern Box Turtle), boat (the shad boat), red berry (the strawberry), blue berry (the, uh, blueberry), dog (the Plott Hound), beverage (milk), mammal (the gray squirrel), birthplace of pottery (Seagrove), folk dance (clogging), and popular dance (shagging).
Don’t make the mistake of believing that all these proclamations were pro forma and automatic, taking little time away from the important business of the state. The controversy last year about declaring an official state dance was a full-fledged political debate – the subject of lobbying, commentary, and an eventual legislative compromise. And then there was the bill introduced last year to make Lexington the site of the state’s official barbecue festival. Vinegar-soaked Tar Heels down east nearly marched on the capital in open rebellion (Parker’s Barbecue in Wilson would have catered the affair).
Let’s urge our state and local officials to issue yet one more proclamation – something to the effect that everything that everybody in North Carolina sees, uses, excavates, eats, polishes, pets, celebrates, learns, navigates, or flees from in terror is officially neat-o. In the meantime, folks, please get back to work delivering core public services effectively and efficiently.
Anything less means consuming scarce time and energy on trivialities. See what you’ve done already – I’ve just written a column largely about the rutabaga!
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.