Ribeye or die

The rib eye steak is the most American, masculine, flavorful steak there is, period. I don’t want to hear any bullcrap about the filet or even the t-bone or porterhouse. No, the ribeye is where it’s at. Nobody feels the need to wrap bacon around a rib eye, although I’m going to try that now that I think of it. The filet is effete; the ribeye is balls to the wall.

Any man who would pick a filet over a ribeye is of suspect masculinity, end of story. Any woman who does the same, well, I’m not in the habit of dismissing women based on their dietary choices, but let’s just say that a chick eating a ribeye is hot, especially if she’s wearing some leather boots.

The ribeye is bad ass. This scares people, even those of us ballsy enough to eat them regularly. You can almost hear them whispering as you approach the meat counter: “I’m going to kick your ass” they say. When Ted Nugent sang, “The road I cruise is a bitch now, baby”, the message was clear: “I don’t take the easy way out, because I’m a man.” Ted Nugent eats ribeyes.

The ribeye steak represents America. It’s the backbone. It is chock full of delicious fat, providing flavor out the wazoo, whatever the hell that means. The fat marbles through the cut like liberty marbles through U.S. history. When Sam Houston led his troops, saber in hand, against Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto, it was a ribeye-esque maneuver. In fact, “ribeye” should probably replace “bitchin’” and “kick ass” as the to go-to casual term for excellence.

“Dude, that was so totally ribeye.” People will know what you mean.

People who promote crazy low/no-fat diets fit more for gerbils that liberty-loving Americans would undoubtedly pick the filet over the ribeye. There is a confused rationale behind this abhorrent, un-American choice.

For the low/no-fat crowd, an external locus of control trumps individual liberty. Sure, they feel like they are making their own decisions and feel that some liberty is desirable, but they ultimately give away too much liberty away to a central control. This perplexing decision is one based on an indoctrinated fear of too much fat, an ill-advised faith in the medical community, and a general unnatural/illiberal impulse. Irony. Think of the British loyalists during the American Revolution . . . they just couldn’t bring themselves to take a leap in the dark for independence, even though many of them disagreed with the British policies of the time.

Those are the people who grab for the filet.

Avoiding the ribeye is cowardly. You assuage your fear by opting for the filet. “Oh, it’s a healthier choice!” the fraidy cats tell themselves.  “The medical community recommends it!” they bleat. Forget that this is the same medical community that told whole generations to get off butter and onto margarines packed with unnatural, heart disease-causing hydrogenated oils. Yeah, those people should be dictating your nutritional choices.

And even if the medical experts were correct that the ribeye is bad for you, so what? Who are they to tell anyone what they should eat? King George III didn’t want us to rebel, yet several years later, patriots in New York City pulled the statue of him down on Bowling Green, cut the head off and jammed it atop an iron fence. Take that, ribeye hater!

Tell the Inuit peoples of Northern Canada that fat is bad for you. They gorge on whale and seal blubber and have virtually zero heart disease. You want to live in some natural hippie utopia, at one with the earth? Slam a ribeye, preferably a grass-fed one. Quit being a pansy. Stop listening to “experts” all the time. Science can be great, but tell the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima how great science is.

The ribeye represents natural liberty because when you see it, you have an ingrained response to see it as something dangerous and forbidden. Yes, we’ve been brainwashed by the “experts” to fear liberty. We’re like Pavlov’s dog when confronted with our own freedom. Luckily, there are those of us who refuse to take it.

Tell Andrew Jackson’s men at the Battle of New Orleans they can’t fire successfully on the advancing the British force, a force they decimated in minutes. Tell them they can’t eat a ribeye. Go ahead. Tell them.

True libertarians won’t listen. We grab ribeyes at the meat counter with impunity and feel giddy for a few minutes knowing we’re going to be chowing down on that mother later. It’s almost sexual. When I grab a ribeye and show it to my wife and say “How about we get this?” she invariably says, “Ooooh, yeah!” . . . sometimes pawing at the steak to feel its thickness.

Yes, more meat equals a more exciting relationship. It’s an axiom.

Embrace your libertarianism. Put on your adult britches, get a ribeye and slap it on the grill. Char it up and enjoy it. Don’t let others tell you what to do. Last I heard, this is America, not some quasi-socialistic European fiefdom.

Ribeye or die.

(My friend Tracy L. Connors coined “ribeye or die”. . . I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit her)