RIP Hostess

Hostess will finally cease
Mixing flour and sugar & grease,
And many are sad,
But is it so bad
After making the nation obese?

For me, the bankruptcy and liquidation of Hostess was a bit like reading of the death of a former celebrity that you had thought was long deceased. I have not seen, much less eaten, a Twinkie in twenty years. The company's demise has been met with an outpouring of grief fit the passing of a national icon, which in a way it was. But was it a good way? This was a maker of products whose nutritional emptiness and questionable chemical content were so widely known that their consumption once comprised part of the psychological testimony for the defendant in a murder trial. While I do mourn for the 18,000 jobs lost, the death of Hostess leaves me feeling... curiously empty.