Who would have thought that Kevin MacKenzie was so keen on chocolate?
Kevin (no, that isn't a typo: I'm docking him an L for evident stupidity) appeared last week on the BBC's flagship outlet for hot air and vapidity, Question Time. (QT may be the flagship, but the fleet is now so populous that even the Israeli navy would struggle to stop every vessel in its course.)
Anyway, Kev is no stranger to nautical strategy, having been editor of The Sun at the time of the infamous "Gotcha!" headline that announced to the world the sinking of the Belgrano. So one awaited with breathless anticipation his comments on the worst maritime catastrophe since BP left the cap off the toothpaste tube.
A catastrophe that befell, not only those who died on the ship, but Israeli foreign policy.
The water had been somewhat muddied previous to Kev's contribution by Matthew Parris, the disarmingly charming and diffident columnist who had begun by announcing his complete boredom with the Middle East and intention to steer well clear of discussing it.
(Nice chap, Mr. Parris ... Sordel would have him to dinner. Both him and his deeply untroubled conscience.)
Kev, however, is not one to charm, to disarm, to equivocate. No shirker of opinion, Kev.
So, he advanced the familiar arguments on Israel's behalf, and then added this:
It seems that we have been overstating the hardship experienced by Gazans. Because there is surplus supply of Snickers.
Chocoholic Kev has a list of essentials that stops with one, and he bears an abiding grudge against Kraft for acquiring Cadbury. No Dairy Milk man, he. It's Snickers that delights the Mackenzie palate, and any aid agency that can ship him a box can rest, its humanitarian task complete.
Praise God and pass the peanut. Monkeys love them.
(Whether Mr. Parris also partakes of a quiet snicker is dubious, since he has grown tired of endless debates as to confectionery preference and is keeping his own counsel.)
Interestingly, the Snickers bar is a taste that Kev shares with the Israeli spokespersons who had used this same factoid on News 24 earlier in the day. Clearly they are of one mind with him that a nation has nothing to fear that has been visited by deliveries of what Wikipedia informs Sordel is the biggest-selling chocolate bar of all time.
It turns out that - just as economists use the price of a Big Mac & fries as a universal standard of parity for cost of living - so the ubiquity of Snickers is a barometer for international human rights. In Iran and North Korea, the snicker is seldom seen but often dreamt of.
Personally, Sordel is partial to Whole Nut, and is grateful that he lives in a country where the choice is not made on his behalf at the border.
