- LOS ANGELES -- Forget Iraq.
Forget the world economy, or terrorism, or America's deteriorating global
image. What the 2004 US presidential election is really about is a fight
over politically incorrect fast food.
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- First came the infamous furore over French fries - renamed
"freedom fries" by a certain faction of patriotic Republicans.
Now battle has been joined over the accompanying item on the menu - tomato
ketchup.
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- Ketchup may be as all-American as cheerleading and apple
pie, but Heinz, the country's leading ketchup maker, also happens to have
a direct link to John Kerry, President Bush's Democratic Party challenger.
And that poses a problem for every fast-food-loving Republican.
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- Mr Kerry's wife, Teresa, is the widow of John Heinz,
and as such controls the family interest in the company - roughly 4 per
cent of Heinz stock. Could it be that with every squirt, ketchup consumers
contribute to Democratic Party campaign coffers?
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- Such was the thinking behind a new line called W Ketchup,
which hit the stores to great fanfare a month ago. "You don't support
Democrats. Why should your ketchup?" went the slogan. An initial production
run of 48,000 bottles sold out in no time, and the concept became the talk
of the cable television news circuit.
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- Now the plot - if not the sauce - is thickening fast.
A second Republican-friendly product called Bush Country Ketchup has surfaced,
and is trying to muscle in on W's act by accusing its competitor of not
being enthusiastic enough about re-electing George Bush.
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- "We can no longer allow W Ketchup to masquerade
as a conservative condiment and continue to market itself to our fellow
Republicans without answering several troubling questions that have come
to light," Bush Country Ketchup's founders wrote in an open letter
posted on their website a few days ago.
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- What could possibly motivate such conspiratorial mutterings?
It turns out the W of W Ketchup does not refer to President Bush's middle
initial. It stands for Washington, as in George Washington, whose likeness
adorns the label along with the Stars and Stripes and images of military
heroism.
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- Furthermore, W Ketchup founder Bill Zachary has described
his product as "non-partisan" and himself as politically "middle
of the road" rather than conservative. That may not be a bad marketing
strategy - why restrict the market to diehard Republicans? - but it has
infuriated Bush Country co-founder Patrick Spero.
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- "W Ketchup is a nebulous company. Our mission is
clear - the re-election of President Bush and the success of the Republican
Party," Mr Spero wrote. "W Ketchup appears to be trying to have
it every which way, engaging in Kerry-esque flip-flopping and capitalising
on conservatives' affectionate use of President Bush's middle initial."
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- Bush Country Ketchup may wear its politics on its sleeve
(its bottles show a Republican Party elephant balancing a tomato in its
trunk with the slogan "Making sure Kerry won't ketchup to Dubya")
but it, too, has a dirty little secret. The manufacturer of its fancy $5.99-a-bottle
gourmet ketchup is from San Francisco, a bastion of liberal perfidy where
Democrat-loving foodies have been shunning Heinz for years - for strictly
gastronomic reasons. Clearly, the sauce will be flying for some time.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=544398
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