The American polity has now gone from “a chicken in every pot and a car in every back yard” to a box of chicken in order to buy the gas for your car.

The fast-food chain Bojangles in early April was giving away $10 gift cards for gasoline with every purchase of a 12- or 20-count “family meal.” With the national average for a gallon exceeding $4 for weeks, that’s quite a promotion: Feed your family and get more than two gallons for “free.” For the record, the smaller of those two “meals” contains “12 pieces of boldly seasoned chicken, 6 made-from-scratch biscuits, 3 fixin’s and a 1/2 gallon of tea.” At the time of this writing, it costs $32.99, so the gasoline card represents, in effect, a 30% discount.