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‘At $50, we’re going to be eating at Taco Bell.”

And we have a winner!

Congratulations to State Rep. Charmaine Marchand, whose dubious, yet poignant plea to keep high-priced meals for legislators alive earns her this year’s Doh! Award. Quite an incredible achievement considering we were just 49 days into 2008 when she deep-fried Gov. Bobby Jindal, accusing him of forcing legislators to join his fast-food fascination under the guise of ethics reform.

Especially remarkable is the speed with which the Democrat from New Orleans clinched the award. Something billed as a marathon hasn’t been wrapped up this early since … uh … uh … last year’s governor’s race, a landslide where Jindal’s only drama—and his only debate—was whether to eat at Arby’s, Burger King, Dairy Queen, McDonald’s, Raising Cane’s, Taco Bell or Wendy’s—fast-food joints where the candidate racked up $305.70 in campaign expenses over a 45-day period during his gubernatorial victory march.

Speaking of goober, Marchand’s tantrum came during a House committee meeting on Senate Bill 8, legislation that puts a $50 cap on a meal or a round of drinks that lobbyists buy for lawmakers. It’s her belief that short of a Happy Meal, it’s impossible to find a restaurant in Baton Rouge where a lobbyist can pick up her tab and keep it under $50. Her smoking gun is a trip she and her fiancé took to Copeland’s, where they each ordered iced tea, salad, entrees, coffee and dessert and walked out more than $100 lighter.

Maybe they should have gone to Juban’s, where, according to the restaurant’s online menu, the same combo meal would have cost between $39 and $45 per head.

Even on the off chance you could find such a restaurant [as I did in about five minutes], she argues it’s useless unless equipped with a private room so legislator and lobbyist can talk business away from the eavesdropping ears of the taxpaying public. Again, Juban’s has such double-secret rooms, but let’s not quibble over details.

Instead, here’s your big picture moment: Is there anything better than an elected official complaining that they can’t properly serve the public unless they’re able to conduct business in the back room of an expensive restaurant while a lobbyist plies them with steak and liquor?

Absent relief from this oppression, her only option, she says, is to join Jindal as a citizen of Fast Food Nation.

Not since another French-named female member of the ruling class declared, “Let them eat cake,” has such a sense of entitlement regarding food been uttered. Call them femme food fatales.

Fortunately for Marchand, beheadings are, at the moment, on the politically incorrect list.

She doesn’t, however, walk away empty-handed. Marchand’s Doh! Award comes with the coveted Homer J. Simpson prize pack—a golden statue of Homer made from honey-glazed doughnuts, dinner for two at Moe’s Tavern and after-dinner Squishees from the Kwik-E Mart. Fear not, those of you worried about an ethics violation, the value is $39.97, well below the proposed $50 cap.

No surprise here, but Marchand, it seems, is a bit of a sore winner, looking for a morning-after pill to wipe out the whole affair. The day following her award-winning faux pas she still said the price cap was unfair but suggested the cracks about Taco Bell and fast-food restaurants were jokes.

And those were funny how?

Marchand is about as funny as Nick Saban telling coon-ass jokes.

I guess it’s all in the delivery.

So, Charmaine Marchand, you just won the Doh! Award, what are you going to do now?

Disney World, I suspect, is out of the question. No way she eats there for under 50 bucks.