Ceci n’est pas un taco.

One of the most ridiculous things I’ve read this week: a political kerfuffle in California over the meaning of “street taco.”

“Steve Hilton,” the Republican front-runner candidate for California governor, “called a Crunchy Del Taco a ‘street taco’ in California. The backlash was instant,” reported the Times.

Hilton “posted a video of his Del Taco order. Social media users accused him of misunderstanding the state’s Mexican food culture.” (Evidently, “Crunch Del Taco” is a menu item at the southwest fast food chain restaurants.)

Hilton has a point when he notes that journalists should focus on the issues and not the taco.

But his detractors are also right to call him out for what he is: a carpetbagger, in the most literal sense of the term. (I mean, come on, he’s a Brit who identifies as a Republican. What could be less Californian than that? Tacos aside, of course.)

The reason why Hilton might become the leader of one the largest leftist states in the Union is because the democratic shoo-in fell by the wayside after revelations of his sexual predation.

These days, it feels like the whole world has been turned on its head.

In Maine, Democrats are making moral excuses for a Senate candidate whose previous Nazi-sympathies are on full display.

In Texas, a San Antonio Democratic candidate for Congress openly spews ugly antisemitic rhetoric.

And just this morning, I read about a candidate for Texas oil regulator who has brushed off claims of antisemitism despite countless racist outbursts.

He had posted a poll on social media asking his followers to weigh in: Jews or Muslims, the biggest threat? he asked them.

When challenged over the post, he “said that last year’s social media poll question, which he deleted, was meant to show Islam ‘is the bigger threat‘” (Times). Talmudic or Sharia law, it’s probably all the same to him.

Oh, how I pine for the days when a taco was just a taco!