The Dark Side of Chocolate

I believe a wise man once said that emotions lead to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to hunger. And hunger leads right to Oh Henry. After all, it's one of our top-selling candy bars. It's got chocolate, peanuts, nougat. It's delicious, scrumptious, outstanding! Okay, maybe no wise men have mentioned this last part (and I certainly don't count Seinfeld's Jackie Chiles as wise), but it's still quite probably true. I'll be the first to admit that I'm constantly hungry, even when filled with fury. You've probably experienced hunger yourself at some point. You might even be hungry right now. And if so, I know you'll be loyal to your Dark Master: the cocoa bean. Yes, America is addicted to the dark bliss of chocolate. We even have two holidays that are all about getting candy and chocolate! Upon contemplation, this might seem to be a dire, sticky and unhealthy situation for a society to be mired in. But rest assured, according to some of the propaganda I recently saw, chocolate is really very good for you. In fact, I was almost hypnotized into believing that milk chocolate is a perfectly good substitute for real milk. Remember those healthy food pyramids you learned about as a kid? I bet you didn't know that they're built atop a foundation of pure milk chocolate. For some reason, teachers often decide not to mention that part. However, if you go to Hershey's Wonderful World of Chocolate, you'll get to hear all about it.
Given that Australia has dozens of small amusement parks dedicated to giant fruit, I suppose it's only fitting that North America has a theme park dedicated to chocolate. When I first heard about the Wonderful World of Chocolate, situated conveniently enough in the small town of Hershey, I was imagining armies of Oompa-Loompahs toiling away in underground chocolate factories. Instead, I was greeted with a video of Seinfeld's J. Peterman very pretentiously (does he ever act any other way?) welcoming me to the sweet, sweet World of Chocolate. Before long, I was sept through several shows and tours, all packed full of propaganda and gratuitous mentions of Hershey's products. In fact, the entire town was apparently founded by Milton Hershey, who was supposedly one of the best men to ever live. There was a whole tour dedicated to declaring how great Hershey was, and in it they stopped only very short of dubbing him Jesus. This seemed to be a bit much, but I was willing to go with it until they revealed his full name.
Milton. Snavely. Hershey.
Snavely? SNAVELY?! I'm sorry, but who does this guy think he is? And who did his parents think he would be? A slightly inferior version of SNIDELY WHIPLASH? Frankly, such a connection only proves the villainy of Hershey's chocolate. It makes me suspect that Milton Snavely Hershey would go around tying people to railroad tracks and then laughing maniacly with his twisty, villain mustache. That's probably what he would do to enforce discipline on his enslaved Oompah-Loompah workers. These low labor costs might explain why Hershey's is able to maintain such cheap prices, and might also reveal how they're able to throw so much money into propaganda to make people believe that chocolate really is healthy. With any luck, this page will be able to make the truth heard. I only hope it can turn people away from the Dark Side of chocolate before they slip completely into the grips of Darth Snavely. Which, by the way, should totally be the name of the Scith villain in Episode III. That would be sweet. Just like all the great puns they used at Chocolate World.
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