food issues

A Seasonal Menu of Political Food References

If you’ve been following politics lately, even (or perhaps especially) on a superficial level, it’s been hard not to notice all the food references floating around. Political types have long loved a good grocery-based dig — Bush I was totally out of touch with everyday Americans because he had no idea what a gallon of milk cost; nothing signified Obama’s sissified elitism like his affection for arugula. But things have accelerated of late: Obama’s calls for a Slurpee summit last November were but a preview of things to come. Political America has never seemed quite so food-obsessed as this summer. At first, we at Daily Intel pondered a way to find a unified theory of political food metaphors. Were there certain signifiers that made Republicans reach for different gustatory comparisons than their Democratic counterparts? Is this a side effect of our nationally disordered approach to eating? Maybe it’s the rise of foodie-ism and the status anxiety with which we’ve invested our diets?


But nothing fit together neatly into a single theory — not all food goes together well, after all. So make your own meal. We’ve put together a seasonal menu, based off of all the various food-related metaphors and incidents of the summer. It’s not exactly farm-fresh: Despite all the talk of trimming the fat from the budget, there are plenty of artery-cloggers here. Pork, you’ll note, while not specifically listed on this season’s menu, is always a specialty of the House. And Senate.


A Seasonal Menu of Political Food References