Banning Butter Sculptures--The Slippery Slope?

(Butter sculpture from New York State Fair--photo found here.)

The folks at PETA (People with Erratic Takes on Announcements) have opposed the Iowa State Fair's proposal to make a butter sculpture of Michael Jackson it says here in their press release. (PETA pipers publish a pack of pecksniffian press releases?) Instead, they want Dairy Michaelangelos to use a product called Earth Balance that is a non-dairy butter substitute. (By "non-dairy substitute" they do not mean a temporary teacher with lactose intolerance.) Will they picket with signs "FAIR UNFAIR TO BUTTER FAT" ?

When someone offers me a non-dairy creamer for my coffee, (something I describe as a "white powdery substance" --to use a phrase borrowed from testifying narcotic cops) I ask, "Do you know how they make that stuff?" They often say "No! No! Don't tell me," not wanting to know what is in the witch's brew of chemicals they are dumping in their hot brew. Then I finish the joke by saying "They get cows to graze on Astroturf!" Now that's something the PETA pipers would certainly condemn!

The Iowa State Fair actually asked people to vote on whether to make a butter sculpture of the King of Pop. The voting closed today and the results will be found here tomorrow--the 17th. (See Updated post above this one!)
(Maybe this is the answer to a mystery. When Sarah Palin heard that Iowans were voting, perhaps she thought the state had moved its "first in the nation" caucus of the 2012 presidential race to 2009 to get a jump on New Hampshire, and she planned to scurry on down!)

Is there a connection between Michael Jackson and butter? Do you remember the Pepsi commercial where his hair caught on fire because he used some substance in it to make his locks shiny and manageable? Maybe it was the hair butter on sale here.

And why not Jacko? After all, in 1997 the Iowa State Fair displayed a butter sculpture of his famous father in law--Elvis. Here it is:


Is this a waste of butter ? No, they recycle the stuff--and make new statutes out of the old butter . " A few years ago, sponsors became concerned about the cost of the hundreds of pounds of butter being used every year and [Norma "Duffy"] Lyon, the sculptress, figured out that it would work just fine if the butter was frozen and used again and again -- and again.
"We have to replace some of it from time to time," Lyon the sculptress said. "But it works just great freezing it and thawing it out."

What happens if the Iowa Fair vote comes out in a tie? If the famous Iowa butter cow seen below sees his shadow they'll be six more weeks of arguments about hanging chads, and some good old fashioned litigation.





PETA has also suggested that a similar stunt--the Texas hot dog eating contest-- needs to be replaced by a veggie burger eating competition. I believe they held one once, and the winner consumed one and one half in a twenty minutes. Banning butter sculptures would be the beginning of a slippery slope, I say.

Iowa is not the only state that features butter sculptures. Here is an amazing farm family carved from butter by Jim Victor, and found with many other wonderful dairy and foodstuff art at this website.


I have to wonder if Earth Balance, the PETA suggested medium, will work as smoothly as butter on the artist's palate palette. If it has the same relationship to butter as non dairy creamer has to the real thing, it will be like replacing fine white marble with papier-mâché.

Iowa is not the only state that recycles its butter sculptures. New York turns it's butter sculptures into bio fuel--as you can see in this YouTube video. Does this sound like a yummy breakfast to you--two slices of bread slathered with bio degraded butter and petroleum jelly ?