In Nebraska, a bone to pick over chicken wings

Ander Christensen looks like he could be the son of the scientist in

Independence Day — the Area 51 mad genius who admits, “They don’t let us out much,” in the 1996 film — and the Lincoln, Neb., resident may have exposed a secret just as mind-blowing as alien visitation: Boneless chicken wings, those staples of sports bars everywhere, are not really made from the wing of a chicken.

During the public comment period of the Lincoln City Council meeting on Aug. 31, Christensen stood at the lectern and dared to speak truth.

“We have been casually ignoring a problem that has gotten so out of control that our children are throwing around names and words without even understanding their true meaning, treating things as though they’re normal,” Christensen said to the assembled lawmakers, including his father, Roy, who has been on the City Council since 2013.

“I go into nice family restaurants and I see people throwing this name around and pretending as though everything is just fine. I’m talking about boneless chicken wings. I propose that we as a city remove the ...,” the younger Christensen continued, as laughter erupted in the council chamber.

At this point, Christensen turned to the laughing visitor, stared at the offender for a second and deadpanned, with the timing of a comic, “Excuse me. C’mon!” as if he were being interrupted on a matter of great civic importance.

“That we as a city remove the name ‘boneless wings’ from our menus and from our hearts,” Christensen restarted his petition, placing his hand on his chest in a touch of dry theatricality.

In an phone interview, Christensen said he’s “100 percent serious” about his petition to eliminate the term “boneless chicken wings” from menus, not just in Lincoln but across the country. I asked if there were perhaps a few tonguein-cheek percentage points in there somewhere.

No, he said. The country is dealing with so many complex and important issues right now, he added, “that we might not ever accomplish them in this generation. It is imperative, especially right now with how everybody is feeling in the global climate, that we have a win. We need to have an issue that we can accomplish. We can accomplish it quickly. This is it.”

“This is going to be when we turn around 2020,” Christensen said.

During his scripted diatribe to the council, Christensen outlined three reasons the term “boneless wings” should be banished forever from menus at restaurants, carryouts and the like.

No. 1, he said: “Nothing about boneless chicken wings actually comes from the wing of a chicken. We would be disgusted if a butcher was mislabeling their cuts of meats, but then we go around pretending as though the breast of a chicken is its wing.”

No. 2, he said, “Boneless chicken wings are just chicken tenders, which are already boneless. I don’t go to order boneless tacos. I don’t go and order boneless club sandwiches . ... It’s just what’s expected.”

No. 3, he concluded, “We need to raise our children better. Our children are raised being afraid of having bones attached to their meat. That’s where meat comes from. It grows on bones. We need to teach them that the wing of a chicken is from a chicken, and it’s delicious.”

Christensen then suggested other names for these bogus wings: “We can call them Buffalo-style chicken tenders,” he said. “We can call them ‘wet tenders.’ We can call them ‘saucy nugs,’ or ‘trash.’ We can take these steps and show the country that’s where we stand and that we understand that we’ve been living a lie for far too long, and we know it, because we feel it in our bones.”

Christensen, 27, has had to take time off work as a chemical engineer to deal with the many media requests.

He’s been interviewed by at least 20 outlets, he said, including the New York

Times and radio stations in Canada and Australia.

“My take personally is that this is too big an issue for the small stage of the Lincoln City Council,” Roy Christensen said. “Maybe we should just kick it up to the Department of Agriculture. They handle the classification of agriculture and meat products.

“Maybe that’s the best place.”