Eating disorder

 Read the other day that Joey Chestnut, the only professional hot dog eater in America (or so it seems), has been thrown out of the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest. And I don't know how to feel about that.

I don't know how to feel because he's being banned for signing an endorsement deal with a rival hot dog company -- a vegan hot dog company, for heaven's sake! -- and I had no idea hot dog eating had advanced to the branding-wars stage.

I also don't know how to feel because he's being banned by the ruling body of professional eating, Major League Eating, and I didn't know there even was a ruling body for professional eating. Let alone a ruling body that, you know, actually named itself Major League Eating.

Makes me wonder where Major League Digesting comes down on the Joey Chestnut issue. Or how the renegade splinter group Major League Gorging will deal with this, seeing how Major League Gorging is currently planning a spring eating competition with another renegade splinter group, Major League Stuffing Your Face.

"Oh, come on!" you're saying now. "You made all that up!"

Nuh-uh.

OK, so I did, but can you blame me? I mean, over and above the fact there actually is something as ridiculous as competitive eating -- only in America, amiright? -- there are now turf wars like in actual sports.

And how dumb is Major League Eating, using its apparently vast legislative powers to ban the only reason America even cares about competitive eating?

Or maybe MLE thinks the attention the Nathan's contest gets can be attributed solely to people rooting for Joe Blow from Idaho. Yeah, no.

No, the only thing that matters to anyone is whether or not Joey Chestnut wins another Mustard Yellow Belt, which he's won 16 times and is not to be confused with the yellow jersey donned by the winner of the Tour de Syringe, er, France. Or with the Lombardi Trophy, the Borg-Warner Trophy or the Stanley Cup.

All of this reminds me, kinda-sorta, of the Dream Team flap at the 1992 Olympics. Remember that? Remember how Michael Jordan, a Nike client, played for the U.S. team even though its outfitter was Reebok? And how he used the American flag to cover up the Reebok logo as he stood on the medal stand?

It was either the most disgusting thing ever, or evidence that MJ understood better than anyone what America was all about. You can go either way on it, or both.

Anyway ... the MLE is not about to let Joey C. get away with that sort of thing. So he's been banned, to the MLE's and Nathan's detriment. Never underestimate the power of bigotry to get people to act against their own interest.

And by "bigotry", I mean "pro-beef bigotry." In other words: Don't you DARE bring that hippie plant-based crap into THIS bastion of meaty American virtue! You think our boys could have stormed the beaches of Normandy if they'd grown up eating plant dogs in Yankee Stadium? WE THINK NOT.

Or, you know, something like that.