MS Speaks

I've never liked the Colonel Sanders image. I don't eat fried chicken any more anyway, and just about any gravy isn't something I'd go near, but aside from the food being offered, I'm talking about the logo.

http://colonelsanders.com/

Every time you see a KFC, you see the Colonel Sanders image, the Colonel with his moustache and goatee.

Way back in my day, there was a rule everywhere stating that food preparers and servers had to wear hairnets or scarfs. You never saw goatees.

Since the Colonel there on the sign is offering to fix and serve my food, I can't get used to the idea that those hygiene rules aren't being observed. Or was it just women's hair that had to be covered, as in the Catholic and Anglican churches in the old days?

Anyway, loose hair has a way of falling into the food. I know because I've done a bit of cooking and seen it happen.

Your guests probably don't want the food preparer's hair in their food, even if the preparer is an eminent person like the Colonel.

I've seen many food servers everywhere now who have long flyaway hair, not covered by a scarf or a net, not pulled back in any way. Just hanging there, often partly in the person's face.

What happened to the idea that hair should be kept out of food?

I don't find the Colonel Sanders image appealing. I'm not prompted to want to try the food. Couldn't KFC have come up with something better?

You can't argue with something as successful as the KFC chain must have been.

Colonel Sanders himself, the real one, might have been a great person. I know very little about him except that he wasn't a real colonel by any stretch of the imagination. The title was honorarily conferred on him by a governor.

However, the image of the southern "Colonel" who is just an honorary colonel goes way back as a stereotype, and it conjures up a notion of a fairly bigoted white guy with enough money to have influence.

--Which is another issue entirely from the goatee and the moustache. But it's a far more serious issue.

It's time to put an end to this whole romanticization of Southern mythology. The Confederacy wasn't an enjoyable little setup down in tobacco and cotton country, Confederate flags aren't fun, Gone with the Wind is appallingly racist, and I hope no Southern community still observes General Robert E. Lee's birthday, but I'm betting that there still are a few, just as there are schools in the south where "Dixie" is sung every day.

I'm just using this space for something a little different today.