What's In A Name? And What's On That Birthday Cake?

The birthday boy: Heath and Deborah Campbell ran into a problem when they tried to get a birthday cake for their son — Adolf Hitler. Rich Schultz/Associated Press

 

by Todd Kliman

Think the story of the shoe grenades lobbed at President Bush was weird?

This is weirder.

A New Jersey couple has taken issue with a ShopRite store in Greenwich Township for impinging upon their freedom by denying their request to inscribe their 3-year-old son's name in icing atop his birthday cake.

The boy's name? Adolf Hitler Campbell. (He looks like a teeny version of Sammy Hagar.)

Little Adolf, in case you were wondering, is not an only child. He has sisters. Heath and Deborah Campbell have a daughter named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and a daughter named Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie — the latter a presumably misspelled homage to Heinrich Himmler.

Anyway, ShopRite deemed the cake request — the third such try the Campbells have made in three years — "inappropriate."

But a local Wal-Mart stepped in and agreed to take the assignment, apparently deciding it was not going to get in the way of a free-speech issue. (Of course the chain had no such difficulty, some years earlier, in banning the sale of Dixie Chicks albums in its stores).

Initially, a Wal-Mart spokesman said the company would not put anything "illegal" or "profane" on a cake, adding: "Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability." In light of the controversy, it has since decided to "review" its policies.

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It gets better, after the jump ...

The Campbells — who told one local paper that they believe the races shouldn't mix — have placed swastikas on the walls of the house, on the freezer, on a pillow (Goodnight, Third Reich!).

Dad says a name's a name's a name, and invokes the new president-elect and his call for change in urging the outraged to move beyond the past.

Ooh, and how about this:

The attention-seeking neo-Nazis don't work and are collecting disability checks from the government — 35-year-old Heath because he has emphysema, 25-year-old Deborah because she has a bad back.

The story has created a fuhrer (sorry, couldn't resist) in the blogosphere, with Phillyist.com compiling a list of Top 10 Rejected Names for Adolf Hitler Campbell (No. 8: Torquemada Hussein Waterboard Campbell). Some have earnestly speculated on the sure-to-be-doomed future of the young Campbells. Some have had sport with Wal-Mart.

Being a food-focused blogger, I'm obliged to wonder why no one has thought to ask about the cake itself. I mean, what do you serve the tow-headed toddler of a neo-Nazi for his birthday?

Gotta be white with white frosting, right?

Todd Kliman is a James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic and the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine. The Wild Vine, his book about the Rosetta stone of American wine, is due in 2009.