I've withheld comment on pink slime until now for shifting reasons, and I probably ought to shut up still, but the topic continues to flit across my screens.

At first, I couldn't really get into it, and not only because I haven't eaten beef in longer than a decade: OK, ground beef has fillers in it. Not much news there. Yes, I had questions about treating non-nutritive meat trimmings with ammonia, but otherwise, I just couldn't get up for it.

I am impressed by how Bettina Elias Siegel's petition completely galvanized the issue, but as I saw it mount, two of my reactions were outside the mainstream:

One, I was reminded that one never knows the reactions one might draw. I'm sure Siegel did not expect what happened. I'm not saying she would have done anything different, but if she knew that a quarter-million people would sign on, if she knew she would draw the attention of multiple TV networks, if she knew factories would close and people would lose their jobs, she would have been more deliberate.

Please understand, I'm not saying she did a single thing wrong. My point is, if I *knew* that something I triggering was going to draw the eyes of the world, I'd want to reread every line, rethink every possibility, before I unleashed the power. Wouldn't you?

The second reaction was, I'm disappointed that this swift and immediate redressing of an ill didn't resolve something more pernicious. Like, the unrelenting, unfeeling, marketing of junk food to children. To me, it is evil exploitation of a class of people we protect from other evils expressly because we don't think they're capable of weighing selfish entreaties from adults with agendas other than the child's welfare.

Again, I'm not faulting Siegel, for anything. I'm merely saying that if lightning were going to strike, I wish it would have struck in a more meaningful place.