BY MICHAEL HAYNE

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

If there’s any indication that America is a morbidly obese nation, our politics are now related to food. From Chik-Fil-A to Papa John's and Denny's, it almost seems as though Homer Simpson is dictating our ideological framework. Well, now a smoothie shop owner in Utah is joining the fray.

George Burnett, conservative owner of the I Love Drilling Juice and Smoothie Bar in Vernal, Utah, and an apparent fan of drilling for oil (just don’t try his High Octane Booster Smoothie), recently made headlines after his decision to charge his liberal customers extra for smoothies. While self-identified conservatives are asked to pay $4.95 for a 16 oz. smoothie, self-identified “liberals” are asked to pay an additional dollar.

“I’m very open about it,” he told KSL. “I’m very public about it, that I’m going to charge them a little bit more, and I have liberals come in and pay the extra dollar surcharge. Actually all three liberals have been happy to pay it.” (Mediaite)

The very idea of a business owner playing petty politics is a very interesting business decision. After all, do liberals not urinate the same as conservatives do following a smoothie? And how do you even assess the ideological persuasions of customers? After all, most people don’t walk into places and say “Hi, Liberal, party of three.” But given the fact that his store is situated in decidedly red Uintah County, which evidently gave 90% of its vote to Mitt Romney, chances of liberal customers are very nil. It would be like charging conservatives more for access to a gay bar in Chelsea. How much money extra money does Burnett really going to get? Perhaps that’s why many call his plan “pathetic.” But Burnett remains committed.

 “We have a fiscal problem in this country. We’ve got to deal with it or we don’t have a country, so to kind of help make that point, just a little bit, I charge [liberals] just a little bit more,” said Burnett. (Mediaite)

Burnett plans on donating the seemingly very meager extra funds to the conservative Heritage Foundation. So that can only mean that the Heritage Foundation may be getting some new paper clips with the funds. Ironically enough, the Heritage Foundation is the group responsible for first creating the healthcare mandate used by President Obama in his Affordable Care Act, which is the very bane of Conservatives' existence. So there’s even more accidental hilarity.