Vanilla or Pistachio?

Let’s talk about ice cream; as long as the discussion is confined to a restricted set of questions, everything is allowed.

You can argue that vanilla is better than pistachio; you can push for more consumption of pistachio; you can say that pistachio fans are morons; pistachio advocates can claim that it is divisive and wrong to call them morons and that vanilla is a rotten flavor…

What you can’t question is if ice cream should be part of the diet at all, or why aren't there more flavors, or who benefits from the fact that you eat ice cream, or who pays for the ice cream, or the conflicts of interests of the ice cream producers. You can’t point out that both flavors are produced by Baskin-Robins…

When someone brings up these sorts of issues, the following strategies are always useful: Pretend nobody is mentioning them; ignore the troublemakers and don’t report what they are saying. Produce noise and create distractions in order to make the disturbing issue unaudible. Claim that it is unpatriotic, immoral or impertinent to ask that kind of questions. Portrait the questioner as crazy or paranoid; his opinions will not be worthy of consideration.

If you suggest there is no freedom, it can be pointed out that you were able to say anything you wanted about the damn pistachio and its proponents.

You walk out of the room with your vanilla ice cream, feeling happy that you had the possibility to choose it.