'Melting Pot' Metaphor Declared Unjust by Gas-like Minority Groups

The latest offensive in a long assault against the 'Melting Pot' metaphor was launched Tuesday at a press conference called by the Gaseous Minority Association. The GMA released a statement reading, in part, that "unless the Melting Pot is renamed the Melting/Sublimation Pot, this nation has failed to live up to its promises."

The 'Melting Pot' has a proud history of media overuse, but a recent influx of ethnic groups that not only take the shape of their container but fill all available volume therein has tested the melting pot's mettle.

"This is not an ideal world," said John Rickards, a GMA spokesman. "The government can no longer pretend that we have negligible mass and volume. We matter."

Tony Brown, deputy Secretary of the Interior, admitted, "They are certainly turning up the pressure. And as we all know, as the pressure rises, so does the nonideality of the system."

Brown went on to express support for the newer, morepolitically correct Salad Bowl metaphor, in which minority groups mix into the mainstream but do not lose their cultural identity. However, the GMA counters by noting the lack of many gaseous salad components.

"I challenge anyone to consume a salad heavily laden with gases," said Rickards, "I personally guarantee that it cannot be done. And, I might add, even if someone does do it, the disproportionate effort involved in producing this salad merely to symbolically devour gaseous minority groups would be racist in and of itself."

Brown suggested that a recent FDA report indicating that salad consumption causes flatulence clearly provides adequate representation for the gaseous phase.

Whatever the outcome of this pitched debate, Rickards goal is a lofty one. "I have a dream that one day my four little children will be judged not by their phase but by their underlying molecular structures," he said, "I have a dream."

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