Governor's Championship BBQ

From the back of his limo dragging the official barbecue, sprawled behind the chicken chauffeur, Hizzoner waves his shapeless, meaty hand at the unseen parade-goers.

This is a twist on that time-honored device, the Submissive Dominant. (In fact, the governor bears more than a passing resemblance to the Capitalist Pigs, those other embodiments of greed's and graft's pernicious effects on the sensibilities of pigs with authority.)

With the instruments of state power at his fingertips, the governor could force through legislation to improve the lot of pigs and chickens everywhere. "Nevermore shall you fear, brothers!" he could say at gatherings along the route of his whistle-stop tour. "A chicken removed from every pot!" he could promise. And how they would cheer! How they would throng to him, to shake his hand, to pledge their votes, to repeat his name in humble awe.

But no.

For in the state of BBQ (motto: Nunquam praeter dimidium or "Never more than half," a reference to the "food animals'" perpetual lesser-than status), some things are more important than rightness or justice. Or even power. What matters most of all is the duty attendant upon every citizen to fling himself onto the grill in wild populist fervor.