Pop Quiz

by folkbum

Read the following paragraph:

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone--a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. ... Eating on the street--even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat--displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. ... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

That paragraph appears in (a) an angry European's list of things he hates about Americans; (b) a particularly testy early edition of Emily Post; or (c) a report prepared and released at taxpayer expense by the federal government's President's Council on Bioethics written by the founder of said Council himself.

Answer here. It's a little long, but it explains a whole lot of this, I think.