The controversy’s origins are lost to the sands of time, but many believe it was the actual cause of the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. We refer, of course, to the eternal question: “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” Sure, it may seem like it’s a newer issue than that, since the invention of the hot dog is usually credited to a New York City vendor who began selling sausages in rolls around 1870. But we feel comfortable claiming the spirit of the debate has been around for millennia, at least. And now, at long last, after millions of arguments and even more lives lost from clogged arteries and heart disease, a verdict has been rendered. Stop the presses, for we now know that hot dogs are definitively not sandwiches.
This decision has been proclaimed by no less an august body than the National Hot Dog And Sausage Council, America’s foremost voice of authority on all hot dog-related matters. It’s determined that it has all the facts, and it’s voting no:
As the official voice of hot dogs and sausages, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC) is primed to settle this debate once and for all, and our verdict is…a hot dog is an exclamation of joy, a food, a verb describing one ‘showing off’ and even an emoji. It is truly a category unto its own.
Yes, in a shocking turn of events, the council tasked with promoting a food consisting primarily of ingredients you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy has decided that their product is so awesome, assigning it a mere category of foodstuff does a disservice to the mighty hot dog—nay, it is the very stuff of injustice itself. Let NHDSC President Janet Riley explain:
Limiting the hot dog’s significance by saying it’s ‘just a sandwich’ is like calling the Dalai Lama ‘just a guy.’ Perhaps at one time its importance could be limited by forcing it into a larger sandwich category (no disrespect to Reubens and others), but that time has passed. We therefore choose to take a cue from a great performer and declare our namesake be a “hot dog formerly known as a sandwich.”
And because you always want to think of Prince while you’re shoving a hot dog in your mouth, let her eloquent words ring in your head as we go forward on this, day zero in our new era of Post-Time-of-Sausage-related-Decisions (PTSD), which will replace the Gregorian Calendar any day now. Lift high your hot dogs, fellow countrymen and countrywomen, knowing at long last, what you hold in your hand is not some pedestrian sandwich. No, it is a hot dog, a category unto itself, as well as a definite contributor to your early death, and possibly childhood leukemia. Yum!