Geoff Duncan

Today in the grocery store I overheard a man named Frank loudly proclaiming how he hopes McDonalds renames its french fries "freedom fries" to "show support for our troops."

OK, Frank, I don't eat at McDonalds so I don't care one way or the other, but your name probably derives from Francis, so I guess we can just refer to you as "Freedomk" from now on? (I know it doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue... but it truncates down to a shorter form I'm omitting here because I'm being polite.) I guess this also means your grocery cart included some Patriot Dressing, Stars and Stripes Bread, Hail To The Chief Vanilla Ice Cream, and Liberty Roast Coffee? Maybe you had some E Pluribus Unum Toast for breakfast?

Ironically, french fries are Belgian anyway. They were brought to these refreshingly freedom-loving shores by none other than the famous French-speaking, red-headed ponytail-wearing, slave-loving, declaration-writing Founding Father Himself, Thomas Jefferson.

I know it sounds ridiculous. But what we refer to as french toast—at least for the time being—was called german toast until World War I. That's also when we started calling frankfurters hot dogs.