Miscellaneous Veggie Tales

I'm dumbfounded on a couple of fronts here...

Once again, I have read something that expresses the opinion that Ronald Reagan was a great American in the same class as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. There's this unexplainable wave of opinion that feels that we should put The Great Miscommunicator on a piece of U.S. Currency, should create a new space on Mount Rushmore for Him, rename every city, town, and street in the country, etc. I DON'T GET IT.

What exactly did Mr. Reagan do, while trying to convince everyone that it was Morning In America, but enrich the wealthy, demonize the poor, implicitly endorse shady arms-trading and regime-supporting deals abroad, and create staggering deficits that crippled economic recovery for a generation, while reaping the right-place-at-right-time benefits of the inevitable implosion of the Communist bloc? He was an actor who became an actor playing a President, for the benefit of his wealthy backers. WHAT. THE. F**K?!

Secondly, I was shopping at the local farmers' market last week, and saw in the produce section the following: NASCAR BRAND GRAPE TOMATOES.

Questions abound.

Does the distributor of these tomatoes think that putting the NASCAR brand on this fruit (OK, so I took some poetic license in using "Veggie Tales" in the subject line) would encourage normal, thinking human beings to buy them? Or, like me, will these normal, thinking human beings run quickly in the opposite direction to buy something that does NOT have an inconsistent, incomprehensible branding tie-in? (I will also refuse to buy anything with a Nickolodeon tie-in, since it fosters youth dependency on horribly badly-animated, inane television. What exactly does Sponge Bob have to do with the quality of breakfast cereal or snack crackers? More importantly, could I purchase something more cheaply without the licensing fees?)

Or do they figure that those who don't normally buy tomatoes (since they don't eat anything that they can't deep-fry) will sweep them off the shelves before the slack-jawed confusion sets in? "Lurleen, is this a grape or a tomato?"

It's truly Evening In America...