There is a jihad in America against the Hamburger. It's a silent war, with most people never seeing that it actually exists, but its there lurking beneath the surface. The only way you can get drawn into this war is to try to actually get a hamburger somewhere. Then you will see the Cheeseburger warriors try to descend upon you and force the cheese down your throat. If you look at the McDonalds sign it says "McDonald's Hamburgers" but once the Cheeseburgler got into town, he removed all the hamburgers from the menu. You can buy a hamburger separate, and you can get it in a happy meal, but try to order one off their combo meals; There aren't any! It has actually gotten so ridiculous that if you order the two burger meal with hamburgers they actually give you "two cheeseburgers w/o cheese." Even the places which pride themselves on giving you your burger your way will always try to slip the cheese in more often than not. Wendy's and Burger King are all guilty of forcing the cheese on you.
It's not that I am against cheese, because I am not. I am a big fan of cheese, if you go to http://www.cherrytap.com/i_luv_cheese (the link is cherry tap because if you put fubar.com in a blog it messes up) you'll see someone we all know and love. My problem is that in these chain places, they don't use a good quality cheese that enhances the burger experience, rather a hard flavorless cheese that envelopes the burger and takes out its flavor. For my palette, it's difficult to find a burger combination that really brings out the overall taste of the burger. I have found some places that do this excellently; The Whistle Stop in Seaside, CA was always outstanding with their burgers, but for the most part I really haven't found anyone else that does it to my exacting standards. A bit snobbish perhaps, but when I want a burger, to me the main focus is the burger, not the cheese. If I wanted to focus on the cheese then I would order a grilled cheese.