My reason for reviving this thread is to post what was written by someone two hundred years ago, actually.

See, Thomas Moore wrote a song that did not yet have its own Mudcat thread. So I started the thread, posted the song, and continued the thread with posts of parodies of the song. Which led to a lyric by the Rev. John Graham in defense of The Smiling Potatoes:

Sweet roots of Erin! we can't do without them
/ Poor Corporal Cobbett knows nothing about them...
(to be sung to the tune of Dear Creatures, We Can't Live Without Them)

Cobbett? Who he?
William Cobbett was unknown to me. A search of Mudcat threads will reveal that Cobbett and his "Rural Rides" are sacrosanct to more than one Mudcat member; good enough. But of course, not much help with the potato question. Therefore I had to find out where Cobbett stood with regard to potatoes, and so help me, I'm sorry I ever asked. It's bad enough how he feels about potatoes: that to feed them to pigs is an insult to the pig, never mind human consumption. But Cobbett's anti-potato rants, published and archived all these years, drag in his other pet peeves. That's the what of it: the how of it, his method of getting the feelings off his chest, reminds me of nothing so much as some of the Mudcat threads in the BS section.
In my next thread, some Cobbett quotes. I think this thread is a fitting home for them.