Currell, Billy. Kentucky Fried Tender (2006).

“‘Now before I enter the code,’ Naomi said. ‘Let me tell you the story. It was an eleventh hour deal that Newt Gringrich brokered back in 1995 just before the balanced budget bill was to appear before the White House. Bill was going to sign anyway, but he knew that Gingrich was from Marietta, Georgia and that he had connections with – ‘

‘The Big Chicken.”

Women, Chicken, Money. The Trinity of Tenderness. This is the teaching of Dr. Billy Currell as he takes the reader on a philosophical journey that recasts the evolution of man as being inextricably connected with the Chicken. He shows how chicken (and fried chicken in particular) led to mankind’s big brains, the development of romantic love, the creation of money, and the rise of feminism. Also he shows how it has become the loadstone of peace, security, and capitalism.

Currell’s multifaceted discussion of our existence approaches a social theory that, as far as I am aware, stands with singularity outside the usual realm of sociological studies. It uses the sometimes real, sometimes metaphorical figure of Colonel Sanders as both a Christ-like saviour and as flawed man whose perserverance we should model. The Colonel becomes a founder of both Faith and Government and also a teacher of Love and Eros.

The book covers numerous topics, but it only touches on legal topics tangetially and indirectly. These topics though are most evident in two premises of Dr. Currell: 1) “The first ducat was a bucket” 2) War does not occur in countries with KFCs.

The first proposition looks at the anthropological development of money. He notes that money was first food (the bucket is of course the bucket of Fried Chicken), and that food was the first form of private property. He then quickly traces the evolution of money from meat to grain to gold to paper to plastic. Of course it is at gold (and even more so at paper) level that government becomes entangled in economics. He links paper money to industrialism, and notes that “[i]n 1936, in a move both bold and controversial, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard, making paper notes ‘legal tender for all debts public and private.’” It is appropriate here to note that the publisher of this book is a company named Legal Tender and Private. Anyway, what Dr. Currell here is implicitly pointing to is the government legitimation of the system of trade that Currell argues is a result of man’s involvement with the Chicken. It also points to a governmental control over economics that heightens when “money . . . costs nothing to make.” Economics cease to be based on scarcity and become based on numerical value set by the government. This system is different from that which Currell argues gave rise to today’s social structure. In Currell’s analysis it is the scarcity of Chicken and the scarcity of eggs that gives those items value and make them the moving force in the development of society.

However, this change in system is not necessarily seen by Dr. Currell in a negative light. Quite the contrary, Currell points out that under a modern regime man is better off than he ever has been before, thus his proposition that Wars don’t take place in countries with Kentucky Fried Chickens. This is really a statement about Capitalism, as he uses the KFC is a metaphor for modern capitalism with an emphasis on its industrious nature which allows it the flexibility to cope with new and diverse problems. As Currell points out the opposite of Legal Tender and Private is “Vegetarian and Public” and thus linked to a Marxist philosophy that destroys the idea of private property. The idea of property is of course an extention of his earlier argument, but now he shapes it to show that the government legitimation of this system is good. Essentially, an economic system is a legal choice in the beginning, and Currell attempts to show with empirical evidence that the Capitalist choice is not only one based in man’s prehistory, but also is the system that has the more desirable outcome of peace, freedom, and a higher standard of living. He claims that if Colonel Sanders had taught Khruschev to fry chicken then the Cold War would have been ended (the Colonel was apparently enroute to Moscow when Khruschev gave up the ghost), and further suggests that The Colonel could have sorted out the current Gulf Conflict with a plate of Chicken (George W. on one side Saddam on the other).

Of course, none of this should surprise the lawyer, as it shouldn’t be forgotten that in addition to his divine qualities, his master cooking abilities, and his bawdy language The Colonel was an “aspiring lawyer (his sixth-grade education did not prevent him from practicing).” The Colonel is systemic, and damn that chicken tastes tender.

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*It should be noted for the sake of disclosure, that I do indeed know the Dr. Currell and have had the pleasure of peeking in every now and then as he developed his manuscript. Furthermore, he allowed me the great honor of proofing and commenting on the manuscript prepublication. Thus any biases that the reader would like to interpolate are probably present.

Kentucky Fried Tender
Dr. Billy Currell