Well, I did take notice of the Karl Rove article in Newsweek, but I didn’t, until today, see the fucking cover of the magazine.
Yes, the cover is about how much Obama is an “elitist” because there’s a vegetable called arugula and a beverage called beer, and while there’s not a whole lot of evidence that either substance is consumed to the exclusion of the other by Obama or that either imparts magical elitist or non-elitist properties, you’re supposed to believe this makes Obama unelectable. No word yet on the elitist properties of mustard, turnip, or collard greens. And if you’re holding your breath waiting to hear if John McCain has ever fouled his lips with the fancier foods, you can keep waiting. I’m sure his family’s private chef only makes them food that Bubba would eat. I find these food wars to be amusing as hell, since I’m like half redneck, because I guarantee you that some of the food I ate growing up would make the “journalists” who trumpet these kinds of non-controversies spin with confusion. Chicken and dumplings? I’m so electable. Quail, venison and elk? Elitist! What if I told you that my stepdad shot it all himself, though? Er, people do that? I’d also venture to mention that Mexican food has been 50% of my diet since I was able to chew, but that kind of information could cause a short-circuit. How do you read the tea leaves? Are you an elitist if you drink Miller but not Bud? I suppose it’s a gracious favor to the press corps that I’m never going to run for President with this sort of confusing background. Are all candidates supposed to submit a typical week’s diet for examination, or are only the Democrats?
As Chris Bowers notes, what happens if someone has arugula and beer for dinner? Can “Bubba” handle it? Well, unlike the people who speak for “Bubba” in the national press, I have actually known a number of men that are named Bubba—and a couple of people with two first names, even—and I suspect most of them would probably be able to handle the sight of someone with a plate of Nouveau Spinach and a beer without passing out from anti-elitist shock. A couple might make fun of you for being a vegetarian, but surely at this point non-iceberg greens are a common enough sight to go without raising notice. In fact, one Bubba I have known was fully capable of selling Elitist Beer (read: microbrews) at an annual super-hippie event called Eeyore’s Birthday Party here in Austin. True, Bubba was just his nickname, and not a birth name, but I think that’s generally true of dudes who go by the name of Bubba.
Where do wine coolers sit on the elitism scale? Sure, they’re about as cheap and disgusting as you can get, more so than even Budweiser, but they are also known as girly drinks, and the slur of liberal elitism is just as much about feminizing someone as it is invoking class anxiety.
The worst part of this particular media tactic is that all too many of my fellow flyover state voters buy into it. A bunch of coastal, urban-dwelling journalists decide that “Bubba” isn’t going to like hearing that the Democratic target eats his vegetables, and a bunch of dumbfucks actually start to feel offended that someone is slurring our simple, rural ways with his salad choices. What can I say? We’re insecure. The veneer of sophistication seems out of our reach, and like many people crippled with jealousy, it seems easier to lash out at the objects of jealousy than to really think about the issues. But the deep irony of all this is at that by lashing out like this, my insecure “proud to be a dumbass” red state fellows are playing right into the hands of the real elitists who want to take away your economic security, but are willing to pretend they’d have a Budweiser with you as a booby prize.
70 Responses to “Arugula and Bubbas I have known”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Evan Thomas, Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe are trying to trick the public.
The Newsweek article doesn’t explain that Obama was talking to farmers when he mentioned arugula.
Nor that Obama’s point was that consumers pay a lot for it but farmer’s don’t get their fair share of the price.
That wouldn’t fit in with their elitist narrative.
As a fellow southwesterner, I have to know: is it more elitist to drink Dos Equis or Corona?
And if you’re holding your breath waiting to hear if John McCain has ever fouled his lips with the fancier foods, you can keep waiting. I’m sure his family’s private chef only makes them food that Bubba would eat.
A meme worth spreading. His Bubba kibbles are consumed either on the private airplane his wife loaned him or at one of his eight mansions.
It is sweet that his wife lets him borrow the private jet, don’t you think? So many modern women keep their men on such a short leash.
Meanwhile, J. Sidney McCain III only eats fried Twinkies and drinks warm 40s of IceHouse.
When I was younger, I’d say Dos Equis, because it used to cost more. Now it’s about the same, so the winner of how to drink Mexican beer while maintaining pretensions of non-elitism is to drink Tecate. I, being an arugula and hummus-sniffing elitist, drink Carte Blanca if I can.
What I really hated growing up was when my stepdad would shoot quail and make me finish the odious task of plucking and gutting their little corpses so we could have a quail dinner when guests came over. It seemed to me that if you’re taking out the finer dishes, I shouldn’t have to be shoving my hand up a dead bird’s butt, but apparently, my parents didn’t see it that way.
The food John McCain served at a birthday party:
==============
RICHARD LEIBY (8/31/04): Sen. John McCain tended to his political base Sunday night: the entire national media. The maverick Arizona Republican, once (and future?) presidential aspirant and press secretary’s dream hosted a hyper-exclusive 68th birthday party for himself at La Goulue on Madison Avenue, leaving no media icon behind. Guests included NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, ABC’s Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel and George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, ABC News chief David Westin, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, CNN’s Judy Woodruff and Jeff Greenfield, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, CNBC’s Gloria Borger, PBS’s Charlie Rose—pause here to exhale—and U.S. News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman, Washington Post Chairman Don Graham, New York Times columnists William Safire and David Brooks, author Michael Lewis and USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro. They and others dined on lobster salad, loin of lamb, assorted wines, creme brulee, lemon souffle and French tarts.
=====================
No pundit is ever going to call a Republican an elitist based on food. Nor should pundits do so. But they will do it to a Democrat.
The Newsweek article doesn’t explain that Obama was talking to farmers when he mentioned arugula.
I noticed that as well. I have a feeling that farmers in Iowa know perfectly well what arugula is and what kind of prices it brings on the market. And I bet that some of the product they grow in Iowa even ends up in — gasp! — Whole Foods.
Now that Wal-Mart is making a big push to sell organic products in their stores, corporations are going to start running up against Republican ideology. If all of their “heartland” customers weren’t requesting organic, do you think Wal-Mart would be making a point of selling it?
*headdesk*
Sighhhhhhh……………….
What a very long year this is going to be.
I think John Stewart said it best when he said that he didn’t want his leader to be “just one of us” He wanted an elitist — someone with an oversize cranium that could bend spoons with his mind.
One elitist food makes the whole meal elitist, just like one non-kosher ingredient is enough to make a dish not kosher.I’m with John Stewart.
What’s could possibly be more elitist than saying that out of about 300 million Americans, YOU deserve to be president?
But by all means, let’s obsess nonstop over this since there are no real issues for this election cycle.
That bit about McCain’s birthday party would make a great ad. I think everybody in the country should know that McCain turned 68 in ‘04 and threw himself a birthday party and invited all the talking heads from TV to it, serving them lobster, lamb, and creme brulee.
One elitist food makes the whole meal elitist, just like one non-kosher ingredient is enough to make a dish not kosher. - Jonah
But what if the elitist food was present only accidentally and only constituted
And if you’re holding your breath waiting to hear if John McCain has ever fouled his lips with the fancier foods, you can keep waiting.
All the recipes stolen from the Food Network and claimed as Cindy McCain’s are about a zillion times more elitist than arugula. Or orange juice, for that matter. Passionfruit mouse, seared tuna steaks, and other foods found in deep-freezes on the porches of double wides all over the heartland.
“One elitist food makes the whole meal elitist, just like one non-kosher ingredient is enough to make a dish not kosher.”
Only if the elitist is a Democrat.
For Rethugs, the rule is as long one food is not elitist, the meal is fit for the common man…
Arugula + Beer? = Goddam elitist Democrat Assholes! I bet they drink orange-juice instead of coffee too!
Goat cheese + foi gras + lobster + truffles + beer? = Rethuglican’s eat just like Joe Lunchbox!…
Does anyone else see this talk about “strange elitist foods” and get reminded of those old strips of Calvin and Hobbs where Calvin is going on at length about how gross and unidentifiable the food his mom made is?
It was indeed one of Calvin’s least endearing traits.
Picky eaters annoy the hell out of me. “elitist food” is just another run of picky eating. “I am not familiar with it, therefore it’s weird and people who eat it are weird and a little gross, not like NORMAL people.”
Fuck you, try something new you might like it, and if someone else made the damn thing, you better fucking eat it without complaint.
It mortifies me that people can grow to adulthood and get away with this shit. its like someone needs to take a wooden spoon to the behind of grown men working at a leading news magazine.
Ooopse … unintended html tag ate my post ….
But what if the elitist food was present only accidentally and only constituted less than 1/60th of the total, would the meal then be non-elitist?
What are the politics of an elitist beer drinker supposed to be?
If I insist that my beer is (mostly) local with IBUs > 40?
I think Karl just doesn’t know anything about beer if he believes beer is some kind of demarcation for polical affiliation.
Auguste knows…
mousse. Passionfruit mousse.
Shee-it.
Obama was raised for the most part, from what I know, in a (white) working class household. McCain was born into the ruling class, and that’s not upper middle class, a ruling class family–his father was an admiral.
So if Schlitz is re-issuing itself using the original formula, is it elitist because they’re aiming the re-launch to hipsters or non-elitist because it’s Schlitz, fer chrissakes.
For that matter, what makes arugula an ‘elitist’ vegetable? My parents buy it at their ordinary supermarket in Swampfuck, Lousiana. It’s no more expensive than other more “common” salad greens - you can get bags of arugula at Trader Joe’s in Manhattan for like $1.29 apiece, while romaine and the iceberg/red cabbage/carrot mix are maybe a dime cheaper.
I guess it might be elitist in the way that it’s a vegetable, and a lot of the truly poor cannot afford and/or do not have access to fresh produce.
It also might be elitist in the way that anything “effeminate” is elitist. Like for instance salad, which everybody knows is “girl food”, in contrast to steak, which is “man food”. I have a feeling any cut of steak would have Bubba cred, even though even the ponciest obscure greens are cheaper than almost any cut of steak.
“Passionfruit mouse, seared tuna steaks, and other foods found in deep-freezes on the porches of double wides all over the heartland.”
But that is one of the weird dichotomies of the whole political landscape.
The “Real Americans” in The Heartland don’t really expect their (Republican) president to think meatloaf and mashed potatoes are “high class” food.
But if they got wind of a Democratic president actually serving meatloaf and mashed potatoes, it would be seen as some kind of trick or manipulation and therefore attacked…
They and others dined on lobster salad, loin of lamb, assorted wines, creme brulee, lemon souffle and French tarts.
Loin of lamb? Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who’s had “lamb loin”…and I frequent all sorts of Greek, Moroccan, and other “middle eastern” restaurants. Lamb shank, crown roast, leg of lamb, lamb stew, sure, but “loin”? That’s pretty damn elitist, I think.
Of course, we’ll never hear about it, because those “French tarts” weren’t pastries, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
I’m a picky eater…
Ain’t gonna eat that broccoli.
Uh, you know what happens when the President doesn’t eat vegetables? He has to get a colonoscopy, and then Dick Cheney gets to be President.
I think one of these reporters should just ask McCain what foie gras is, or what the difference between beluga and sevruga is, or why George Bush isn’t *allowed* to drink beer. Elitist + fuckup = Republican hero.
What cracks me up is that Obama is so cool, he’s probably getting kids to eat their vegetables. Meanwhile, drinking in the middle of the day? Shot and a beer? Not ok.
Only people who hate America eat Mexican food. And waffles, don’t forget waffles.
Guh, if we are to the point where fresh vegetables are considered elitist, we are in some deep shit.
What do they want him to eat anyway? Steak that he killed himself, deep fried in a sauce of infidel (muslim, atheist, pick your poison) blood and crude oil?
This is the same Holly Bailey who got tipsy at McCain’s BBQ and fell off his tire swing giggling.
I just had a frozen stouffers lasagne for dinner. Am drinking a Killian’s(though I prefer Rogue Dead Guy Ale), having a few shots of Jagermeister, and listening to a Grateful Dead show from 91(that I was lucky enough to be at).
I read alot, not rascist, consider the media a mouthpiece for stupidity and the GOP, I use fruity flowered smelling soaps and lotion, and have lived my entire life in the state of North Carolina.
I will vote Obama next week in our primary.
I am very elistist.
Video of the aforementioned:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xp0iHOk0mEQ
The real elite eat rocket.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the TV went straight from this obamarugala nonsense to one on the shocking, shocking obesity problem in America. Because people don’t eat enough VEGETABLES. There would be no awareness of the fact that some of the problem is folks who eat a wide variety of healthful foods getting mocked for it. With the media leading the way.
Aw, man, now I have to go to Roscoe’s tonight.
Mmmm …. chicken and waffles ….
(Yes, this is the “Roscoe’s” that’s briefly mentioned in Jackie Brown.)
This all reminds me of a very, very sad week when I visited my sister-in-law (brother’s wife, not husband’s sister!)’s family in South Carolina. I was a vegetarian at the time and she’s a vegan. We had to find tofu or we’d starve.
You know where we found it? The Walterboro Wal-Mart. Elitism my ass.
This is another distraction game. Instead of talking about food elitism, could we be having a national discussion about the dearth of grocery stores in poor neighborhoods, huge subsidies to corn farmers that keeps high fructose filled crap cheap while vegetables and milk are pricey? Or maybe the links between poverty, poor food access, and life-long poor health, a cycle which our gov’t perpetuates purposefully every day through said subsidies?
Didn’t think so, Newsweek.
“Aw, man, now I have to go to Roscoe’s tonight.”
I’m jealous…
MST3K hates America:
As a fellow southwesterner, I have to know: is it more elitist to drink Dos Equis or Corona?
Up in the Northeast, Dos Equis. You can actually get a Corona at a gas station here. Of course, it will have been on the shelf forever and skanky as hell, but you can get it. A Dos Equis, on the other hand, is available only at your finest Mexican restaurants and Giant Eagles, and everyone knows that the taste is far superior to that skank ass Corona.
And Jeebus, I can’t believe I missed the chicken and waffles love. There isn’t a Roscoe’s here in the Bay Area, but if one is ever drunk in Oakland in the middle of the night, get thee to the House of Chicken and Waffles. It’s open 24/7.
So, fried chicken = ‘Merkan (although still acceptable as a racial stereotype. WTF. Who doesn’t like fried chicken?) = plebe.
Waffles = Belgian = elitist.
At Roscoe’s, Larry’s, or the House = usually consumed with beer. Does this meal count as elitist? And assuming a side of collard greens (yum!)? Does Not Compute.
i want to know where fried okra falls on the scale. On one hand: deep-fried=non-elitist. On the other hand: unusual vegetable with a French-y sounding name=elitist.
If anybody hasn’t seen this, it’s quite good and fits right into the elitist food discussion. (somehow…I think…)
Deep fried okra is acceptable “Bubba” food if eaten in the states of Louisiana or Mississippi. Otherwise it’s elitist.
I actually did know someone named (rather than nicknamed) Bubba. His brother was named (not titled) Junior. Both were unsuprisingly from rural South Carolina.
Deep fried okra is on the menu at World Armadillo HQ, therefore is Bubba.
Carta Blanca is Meskin and elitist.
Wine coolers are the unplumbed depths of this election’s media coverage. They’re trashy, white-identified and feminine.
I am related to two men called Bubba. The younger acquired the nickname from his grandma who refuses to use his given name because–I am not making this up–he’s named for his (extralegally kinship adopted) uncle who isn’t even white.
It’s amazing I can get out of bed in the morning carrying all this ignorance on my shoulders. If only the editors of Newsweek were subjected to the same burden, I feel certain they would buckle under and be replaced with sturdier stuff. Like Amanda, or maybe Pam.
Ah, Viking Women VS. The Sea Serpent. One of the great feminist flicks of all time…
But no, you’re half right. When a Republican likes a plebian food, like fried pork rinds, say, that means he’s “one of the people.”
When a Democrat like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton like grits or peanut butter and bannana sandwichs, that means they’re hicks.
Okay, so if fried okra is Bubba, what is boiled okra (properly pronounced “ok-ree” by the way)? As Jerry Clower said, I ate so much boiled okree as a boy I never could keep my socks up. And how is venison elitist? That’s deer meat, ain’t it? You’re pretty much have to go to someone with a yard full of hound dogs and a pick-up with those bigfoot, mudgripper tires in it to get that in the first place, or have things changed so much since I left home?
Check your boots for feces then. I’m doing pretty damn well in a month if I can get any vegetables, but aside from onions I haven’t bought anything out of the produce department for months. Yeah, you’re doing a hell of a lot better than I am if you can buy, oh, an apple. When your diet consists mainly of miserly portions of white rice, everything else looks pretty damn elitist.
I’m still having trouble dealing with the concept of salmon, trout, and venison as elitist gourmet food.
They’re what you shoot at or hook when the money runs low.
This is the comment I posted in reaction to the Editor’s column:
I think Newsweek is much more insulting to the “common voter” by calling this whole thing a “Bubba Gap” - it demonstrates how little you think of the American people. Truth is, his background and life are much closer to most average American’s than someone like George W. Bush, who grew up wealthy and was able to buy his way into Yale and Harvard without once having to take out a student loan. Obama only paid off his student loans within the past several years.
George W. Bush recently reacted with surprise when a reporter told him that gas was almost $4.00 a gallon - and Obama is out of touch?
McCain married a very wealthy woman one month after the divorce of his first wife and owns eight houses and is one of the richest people in the Senate. I’m willing to bet you serious money (well, if I were rich like McCain I’d bet serious money), that McCain is far more out of touch with the average American than Obama.
Truth is, Newsweek is manufacturing issues, deflecting our attention from actual and important topics like the war, the economy, civil rights, institutionalized torture, the crumbling infrastructure of our schools, and the sad state of health insurance in this country. The “arugula factor,” as you so cutely name it, is a media construction served up to provide sound-bytes and non-news instead of reporting on actual and important stories and issues.
The American people deserve better than this, Mr. Meacham. I am profoundly disappointed in your magazine.
Boiled okra is an ingredient in gumbo. Gumbo is very very far from elitist. One of the traditional gumbo options is squirrel, for fuck’s sake.
Which begs another question that the media is sure to pick up soon if food prices keep rising:
Is squirrel meat elitist?
Godless Heathen,
I did not mean to imply that there were not already people who could not afford vegetables. I simply meant to say that if that was considered *above *and beyond the norm, we were in trouble as a society.
Currently vegetables are considered necessities by the mainstream, not ridiculous luxuries. All that I meant was that if such a view (of vegetables as ridiculous luxuries) spread to all levels of society, it would be indicative of serious badness.
What are the politics of an elitist beer drinker supposed to be?
Anti-Australian. But maybe that’s just here.
No such thing as an elitist food, or a Bubba food, really. It’s all context.
Food eaten by an elitist is elisist food. How do we know that the eater is an elitist? He eats elitist food. How do we know the food is elitist? It’s eaten by an elitist person.
This formulation works for anything. Educated in the Ivy League? Well, that’s a clear sign of elitism, if the student is an elitist. How do we know the student is an elitist? Ivy League education, of course. But it’s just a sign of hard work and good fortune if undertaken by a non-elitist. How do we know that the student is a non-elitist? She got an Ivy League education by virtue of her hard work and good fortune.
Live in a fancy house? Elitism/Living the American Dream.
Children in private school? Elitism/Making sacrifices for your family.
I grew up in Arkansas, and fried okra was a summer staple, and boiled and pickled okra were perfectly acceptable as well, although liked by fewer family members. I think many many people who grew up in the rural south with readily available garden-fresh veggies would find arugula perfectly normal.
My parents are as red state crazy Republican as you can get, and they are trying to eat more fresh veggies and less meat (and they have a cattle ranch fer chrissake). Also? They don’t drink at all.
Depends on what grade you’re in.Austin is one of the few places in the world where you can be an honest-to-God card-carrying elitist named Bubba. Having the corporate HQ for Whole Foods in the middle of Texas creates a rift in the fabric of reality that allows such things to happen.
If I grow my own arugula, does that make me more or less of an elitist?
libdevil, you’re thinking too hard. A far easier way to remember who/what is elitist is to look for the D or R after the name of the person involved.
According to Village rules Democrats, and anything they do, are elitist while Republicans, and anything they do are not elitist. That’s how someone like McCain can be considered an average Bubba while flying around the country on his wife’s private jet, drinking expensive wine and eating foie gras and lobster while a Democrat who drives around in a 20 year old pickup, drinking cheap domestic beer and eating pizzas and hot dogs is an elitist.
Short of replacing all of the Villagers that make up our press corpse with people who take the job of journalist seriously, I don’t have any idea how to counter the elitism garbage.
“No word yet on the elitist properties of mustard, turnip, or collard greens.”
French’s Mustard. If you know what I mean. Wink wink.
To quote Steve Martin in “My Blue Heaven” where he plays a Mafia-informant entering the Witness Protection Program:
“ARUGULA. It’s a vegetable.”
Crap; does this now mean some ninny is gonna say Obama has Mafia ties???
And the photo is WRONG.
Elitists drink beer in fancy mugs like this; real down-to-earth people drink beer straight out of the can (NOT bottle), fresh out of the cardboard suitcase and in the cab of their trucks.
Do I havta add the “/snark”???
I think they got the arugula reference on the cover from the book
“The United States of Arugula” which chronicles changes in the American palate over the last 30 years or so. The amusing thing is that the book highlights arugula because, while it might have been elitist in the 80s when no one in america ate anything other than iceberg and maybe
romaine, you can now find it in that fine, elitist institution of McDonald’s as well as in practically every salad mix of greens.
This whole argument reminds me of an old Scottish joke once told to me by an old Scots.
The groundskeeper of a Highland laird grew suddenly ill and none of the local doctors could discover what was wrong with him. They all advised that he be sent to London to see a specialist. The laird offered to pay for the whole trip because he appreciated the loyalty and long service of the man and trusted him. On the eve of his departure the laird extracted the promise that he would live as he had lived in his Highland cottage as the man was known for his frugality and common sense. The trip went beautifully, the specialist discovered the illness and the treatment was quick and soon the man was back home in his cottage. A few days after his return he is called into an angry laird’s office as the bills had come in. His bills for housing and medical expenses were as expected but his food bill was astronomical. The laird wanted to know how he could have been so deceived by his loyal servant. The groundskeeper defended himself thusly-
“Ye tol me to live as I would a hame, but ye dinnae know how expensive venison, salmon and pheasant are in London Town!”
It really does come down to where you are and how rare/common something is near your home.
Those dumplings are hell to shoot on the wing, tho.Regarding okra: my grandmother grew up on an okra farm during the depression. Okra was pretty much all she ate for the first decade of her life. She still can’t stand the sight of it, and our family gumbo recipe is of the file genre. Of course, it’s true that, with the ability to cannibalize their okra crop each year they were probably doing better than, say, the folks from the dust bowl who lost everything.
Yes, this is the “Roscoe’s” that’s briefly mentioned in Jackie Brown.
And which also plays a cameo role in that 80’s classic, Tapeheads.
JTrain: It’s true. I just went to a fancy wedding that was hosted in a barn. Granted, a renovated barn, but nonetheless a barn where fancy was signified by all the wrought iron and unfinished wood. Our fanciest restaurants often just require that you wear clean jeans and your best cowboy boots, but at least it’s not like back home, where men actually had their good cowboy hats to wear out vs. their working hats. I’m sure you could argue that we have elitist BBQ joints, too.
But yes, we have our fair share of ostensible rednecks who you discover are card-carrying members of the ACLU. Back in the 60s, all the jokes were about how LBJ was a mega-redneck. Now he’d be called an elitist.
So we had arugula last night, with other mixed greens, and pizza, and ice cream sandwiches, and beast beer. What does that say about our household?
I’m laughing at myself right now, because I’ve seen that cover around on several blogs, but since the text is so tiny I assumed the story was about the hops shortage that’s hurting brewers (I have no idea what hops looks like, just that it’s a plant), and just skipped the post since I’m a teetotaling elitist.
Beer in a fancy mug? Who drinks that, Newsweek?
Aw, man, now I have to go to Roscoe’s tonight.
Talk about elitist. I hope I never pay thirteen bucks for a waffle and a piece of fried chicken again.
It’s good, though. I’ll miss it.
I didn’t get the impression that elitist food has to be expensive. It seems to encompass anything foreign-sounding, “girly,” or that would gross out an eight-year-old.
“I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”
- George H. W. Bush
What’s amazing about this is that:
A) We’re not supposed to engage in class warfare, and
B) We’re not suppose to fall victim to class envy, nevertheless
C) Not only are class divisions now enforced to an unprecedented extent—and through the official media at that, but
D) Totally fanciful and heretofore unknown class divisions are being enforced through the same channels.
And deeply implicated in the whole shebang is the supposition that class barriers ought to be irrefragable and that middle-class expendables like (Bill) Clinton and Barack Obama are not supposed to be able to break into the ranks of the elite—the idea that the fact they’ve done so proves them “inauthentic”. Because, as we all know, the only authentic people are people who keep to the station in which God has been pleased to place them lifelong.
I’ll bet every farmer in Iowa knows what arugula is. They grow it on their farms. And the person who quoted the letter they sent to Newsweek is right on target.
Of course they grow it, if they’re smart. It’s a fuckin’ weed!
My girlfriend once flung a branch of it into the back of my truck: “Just lop off the end, and stick it in the ground. You’ll have all the rocket you could ever want!”