I find that I’m still annoyed by Margaret Carlson’s crack on “Hardball” the other night that Michelle Obama is elitist because she buys arugula at Whole Foods. Carlson doesn’t want a president who’s an elitist. Or America doesn’t, she says; America wants a president who can relate to the common man.
The first response is that Carlson’s right: someone who buys arugula at Whole Foods is more than likely a member of the elite. The problems with the statement though are: 1, Does Carlson buy arugula at Whole Foods? (ye olde media hypocrisy question; media workers are very well-paid), 2, How large is the arugula-buying demographic; i.e., as we were surprised by soccer moms, aren’t we going to be surprised too by how many people are upper-middle-class (Obama’s base)? 3, Don’t we want a president who buys arugula at Whole Foods?
The third question is the most important. It’s not really a lifestyle question. It’s about habits of mind. Yes, the Obamas are elitist. But elitists have led the fight on global warming, elitists have led the fight for women’s rights and gay rights, elitists have led the fight for stem-cell research. That’s how certain ideas work. They’re adopted by well-educated arugula-eaters first. Arugula itself may be a political issue, inasmuch as Whole Foods is (I imagine, I’ve only been to one a couple of times) dedicated not just to artisanal cheeses, but to some real relationship of consumers to the foods they buy, which as Michael Pollan argues in the American Conservative, is a conservative issue and one vital to the future of the planet.
I got disgusted by elites during the 90s, under Clinton. Elitism then was about globalization, making money, and rationalizing the threats against Clinton’s women. In ’00 I changed my registration to Republican so I could vote for McCain, a straight-talker with a great sense of humor. But McCain doesn’t know how to think, and neither does George Bush. That’s why Bush was prey to the neocons, as Scott McClellan demonstrates in his book. They did the thinking for him. Bush has a third-rate mind. Which is why I’m for Obama. He has a first-rate mind. And he has good values, given to him by his Third-World-hopping mother. He can lead us in a global age out of the disaster Bush has created in the Middle East. And no, he has nothing on McCain’s sense of humor. I’ll vote for humor when there’s order in the world.
As for media hypocrisy, are you as fed up as I am with affluent reporters talking about what people in Pennsylvania and West Virginia really want? They might some times be right, but they are also talking down. What do these reporters really care about in their own lives? What are their values? If they care so much about the common man maybe they should get more of them on television.
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Hmph. Turns out we have similar political views, Phil, including your perspective on Paul and Huckabee, and I too felt the same way about the Clintons in the 90s and voted Republican for McCain in 2000.
But you hit one of my classic complaints this cycle: "affluent reporters talking about what people in Pennsylvania and West Virginia really want. They might some times be right, but they are also talking down."
Peggy Noonan wrote this about party leaders in DC, but it applies to pundits like Joe Scarborough, Matthews, Carlson, etc:
"Most party leaders in Washington are stupid—detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in ‘78 or ‘82 or ‘94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks."
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P.S. i've loved arugula since I was a kid. My aunt made her own sourdough bread on the farm with an ancient starter base. Made the rolls she made chewy, almost like taffy. She stacked fresh goat cheese and arugula from the garden on the rolls for our lunches, and the mix was sublime.
Weren't nuthin' elite about that working 640 acre farm with farm and cowhands.
This is just a bunch of newly educated small town urbanists getting educated in Manhattan and thinking they can now sling the elite label around to prove they've learned the difference, or be newly, perversely urbane. Most of them grew up on Kraft Saturday night specials, and Kraft marshmallow creme in some dipshit town where the newsstands were in supermarkets.
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Funny about arugula and elitism. When I was 8, in 1970, and living with my Lebanese relatives for a semester, I answered the front bell one morning. An elderly Palestinian refugee woman, poor, in headscarf and long dress, asked me something I couldn't understand. I brought out my aunt, who talked with her for a moment.
"It's not our land," my aunt said "but nobody cares if you take some greens. Go ahead."
The old lady and another lady went into the empty lot next to our house and began pulling up what looked like weeds and stuffing them into paper bags. It was winter and the rains had turned the open spaces lush with what I thought were dandelion leaves. I asked my aunt for an explanation.
"They are poor, and they want to eat the greens growing in the lot, so I said they could take them. We don't eat that kind of food. It's for the poor."
Palestinian refugees lived near our village in a crowded, desperate urban camp; they survived on UN rations and donated U.S. flour and cooking oil. They had all been farmers though and were accustomed to harvesting wild greens in the hills, as my ancestors had done before we got too rich.
About fifteen years later, in New York, I figured out that the new trendy salad green everybody was swooning over, arugula, was the same weed those desperate Palestinian women harvested from the empty lot – the same weed my aunt sniffed wasn't good enough for the likes of us to eat, since we are too high-class to eat garbage weeds.
Arugula. It's for American elitists and starving refugee Palestinians.
I never heard of argula until I read Phil's article. I had to look it up to see what kind of food it was–apparently, a varient of Bush Sr's nonexistent bar code:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20080620/cm_weeklystandard/itsnotraceitsarugula
Curb you enthusiasm?
I am from a small town in the Midwest but I've lived in the Middle East and Far East and presently live in Manhattan. I have found New Yorkers to be very provincial in their being very satisfied with themselves.
Full url for Its Not Race, Its Arugula: link to news.yahoo.com
Damn, can't get the whole url…
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Wait until Obama discovers Fiddlehead greens, one of the most fabulous veggies that grows like a weed (considered a weed after it stops being young) in the extreme NE. Clean, steam, and eat with butter. To die for.
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When D’oh-bama asked Iowa voters if they had been into Whole Foods and seen the price of arugula, there were no Whole Foods stores in Iowa.
I believe that Bush and McCain probably aren't very intelligent, but what has Obama done that makes him a first-rate intellect?
Obama is a decent speaker, but I know plenty of people who are well-spoken who don't have a first-rate mind. So far, Obama has been handled delicately, and when he was delicately called out on his remarks about small town whites, he surely didn't come off as well-spoken, charismatic, quick-witted or intelligent.
Outside of being a probable radical 60s throwback, what does Obama have to offer? Do we get his hateful wife as a co-president?
I'm not sure what argula is, but I love Kale, spinach, nettles and field greens.
And who cares about Margaret Carlson? I'm sure that she is just dying for someone from Middle America to step forward and take the reins of power. Maybe some of the 60s generation are finally regretting that they sold the nation out, and tore it to pieces?
'As for media hypocrisy, are you as fed up as I am with affluent reporters talking about what people in Pennsylvania and West Virginia really want?'
Anything BUT the issues, as usual. Cack-handed attempts at persuasion instead of analysis, as usual. Not a skerrick of real journalism to be found, as usual. Good hairdo and a nice smile though; here's your check.
People in PA & W VA simply want somebody to care about them–I agree that's hard to fathom since they are white.