ABSTRACT
Jeremy Rifkin has written a book cum gospel, Beyond Beef, which is a hodgepodge of outrageous claims against our bovine friends. Beef, it seems, is responsible for every ill in America and the world this side of the heartbreak of psoriasis. The elimination of beef would usher in a new world order of peace, harmony, and understanding, with liberty and justice for all—except, of course, for Ronald McDonald, whose harlequin head would finally meet the guillotine. Beyond Beef is a classic in the literature of unintentionally hilarious hysteria. To Rifkin, when the subject is the cow, no claim is too inflated, no crime too heinous. "Much of the religious and secular life of Western civilization has been erected on the broad shoulders of these powerful ungulates", he writes, awestruck. Beyond Beef upped its effrontery ante by demanding that McDonald's devote one-quarter of its advertising budget to the hypothetical veggie burger.
