Our Founding Frankfurters

           

           Apparently it is Fourth of July tradition to watch men and women devour Hot Dogs at disgusting rates.

            For the ninth straight year, the Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Contest is being shoved down our throats by ESPN. Yet for some reason audiences keep tuning in.

            Last year Coney Island had 40,000 spectators watch professional eaters stuff their faces. An additional 1.9 million people watched the contest live on the worldwide leader’s network. Champion face stuffer Joey Chestnut has over 5,000 people who like him on Facebook.

            The event’s appeal is inconceivable. Even the protocol for the contest are just crazy.

            In standard competition procedure, contestants are weighed-in by the Mayor of New York City. When Independence Day comes, the participants arrive in the "bus of champions.” Still, the bus is just the start of this deranged contest.

The most nonsensical aspect of this charade is the prize money. Contest winners are paid $10,000. Whoever eats the second most hot dogs gets $5,000. Also, third place gets $2,500 for engulfing dead pig.

Somehow, this event is taken seriously by television networks. Since 2004, the contest has featured a play-by-play announcer. In 2010, the contest coverage featured sideline reporters. I am not making this up. Reporting recourses are being spent on watching people eat hotdogs for 15 minutes.

If you think that’s nuts, the history of the “sport” is even more ludicrous.

            The organizers of televised gluttony made up the event’s history. According to legend, four immigrants had the first hot dog eating contest in 1916 to determine who was the most patriotic. However, that claim is false because Nathan’s hot dogs were not invented until 1921.

Also, Edward Bernays admitted to the New York Times that legend was fabricated by the event organizers. The actual first contest was held on Coney Island in 1972.

Even since that fateful day, people have flocked to Coney Island and tuned in to watch people eat hotdogs.

Since the event was first carried live in 2004, the number of viewers went from 926,000 to almost two million in nine years. There have been seven documentaries made about the Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Contest since 1996.

There is no rational explanation for the event’s success. Perhaps it is because 26 out of the 40 winners were from the United States. It could be the nostalgic appeal of older people having eating contests in their younger days. Maybe the appeal lies in the shock of seeing a person eat 68 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

Whatever the appeal is, it is unclear if our founding fathers would have understood it. No matter how patriotic this exasperated display of gluttony claims to be, the post-viewing indigestion just isn’t worth it.