postscript

A friend drew my attention to the fact that there is actually a long-standing urban legend positing that Colonel Sanders stipulated in his will that 10% of KFC profits go to the KKK in perpetuity.

That’s fascinating to me, because I had no idea that such an urban legend existed when I jokingly told my son that he should avoid KFC because Colonel Sanders was a grand wizard of the KKK. I guess I should have expected that a pop culture icon like KFC would naturally be the focus of some urban legends.

Anyway, my recounting a story about what should be obvious to everyone was a tongue-and-cheek statement to my son is not the same as actually stating something as fact.

It appears that some of my more hot-headed and less sophisticated readers failed to grasp that distinction. If only people got as angry over the lies our president has told us.

I also think that if Chef Boyardee and Colonel Sanders were alive today—and both were real people, not corporate creations as held by urban legend—I think that they would be less concerned with what I tell my son than with what Con Agra Foods and KFC have done to their original products, which, I imagine were probably very different before being acquired by soulless mega-corporations. There is some truth to this, at least in the case of Colonel Sanders, who, after selling out to corporate investors in 1964, engaged in some legal battles with KFC over the quality of their product.

Moreover, it’s no urban legend that this food is crap.