For the last couple days, a story has been circulating about President Obama daring to order – wait for it – dijon mustard on his hamburger, which is apparently enough to get a burr up Sean Hannity’s ass.

DIJON? QUEL HORREURS! AN ELITIST AND A FRENCHMAN HAS TAKEN OVER THE WHITE HOUSE. SOUND TEH ALARMZZZZ!

Kind of funny, and by funny I mean idiotic in that whole fiddling-while-Rome-burns, reaching-for-anything sense. But I don’t really cover politics or lampoon mainstream media unless there’s a market connection, so the story wasn’t LOLFed worthy until this morning when bg sends me this link to Grey Poupon’s response. KFT sticks their tongue firmly in their cheek and plays defense:

May 8, 2009

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006

Dear Mr. President:

We applaud you, Mr. President, for exercising your freedom of taste when recently ordering a burger with Dijon mustard. We’re always happy to see people use Dijon mustard to add flair and flavor to their favorite foods. The right to choose condiments freely is quintessentially American and embodies the spirit of our democracy.

So we urge you to respond to “Dijon-gate” by issuing a “pardon” to any American who has ever been criticized for putting a liberal spread of Dijon mustard on a burger or a conservative dollop on a ham & cheese sandwich. These “Pardon Me for Loving Dijon” proclamations will empower the millions of Dijon mustard-loving Americans to ask for their favorite condiment with pride.

Respectfully yours,

The GREY POUPON Team
www.greypoupon.com

A “liberal” spread! Ha ha! Or a “conservative” dollop. I LOL’d.

Here’s some more on American-bought “Dijon”:

And what about Grey-Poupon? This famous brand has now all but vanished in France—though the name lives on just about everywhere else. Grey-Poupon was formed in 1870, when the aforementioned Maurice Grey made his associate, Auguste Poupon, a partner in what had hitherto been the Maison de Grey. A century later, in 1970, the directors of Grey-Poupon and of another Dijon mustard firm, André Ricard, having earlier bought the popular Maille label, formed a conglomerate called S.E.G.M.A. Maille. Soon afterwards, the new company decided to phase out the Grey-Poupon label in France. It is still, however, manufactured for export, and a small amount continues to be produced for sale at the historic Maille-Grey-Poupon boutique on the rue de la Liberté in Dijon itself. (M.F.K. Fisher wrote of smelling the aroma of mustard as she passed the shop—which she called “a kind of showplace.”)

The Grey-Poupon sold in the U.S. is another story: Heublein purchased the American rights to the name from the original company in 1946—and though it is prominently labeled as “dijon” mustard, our own Grey-Poupon is now made by Kraft.

The mere fact that the best-known “Dijon”, Grey Poupon, is made by an American, publicly-traded company, should be enough to make Hannity look like captain of the douchebag squad. But I’ll go one further and get all food snob on you and tell you that in my fridge you will find homemade, hand-ground, locally-grown mustard from the farmers’ market and also a brown mustard made with Guinness beer. This is elitist mustard, folks. Specifying “dijon” instead of “yellow” – not so much. But, we live in America, which is supposedly the land of the free, so I don’t expect a lynch mob outside my door over this. If I were to walk into the grocery store and find nothing but yellow mustard, that would be not America but instead Communist Russia. Is that what you want, Sean Hannity?

Kraft has several of the infamous eighties commercials that attempted to establish US snob status for “Dijon” mustard linked on the above website. The one sampled by Hannity above is linked in full here: