Junk food politics
Noting the batches of stories about President Biden eating ice cream, the National Review miffs a tad:
Reporters who join in pushing this association are effectively acting as unpaid promoters of the campaign or politician. Which is why Jennifer Epstein has shown very little interest in, say, Donald Trump’s ice-cream consumption. Zero tweets on that, as far as I can tell.
The funny thing is that as false as this is, the correction would make his decent partisan point… at least narrowly. We did get news coverage of Trump’s eating habits — well done steak and ketchup, for instance. Garnered from me this commentary:
Today we see a snicker that Trump ate steak out at his Trump restaurant well done and with ketchup. I realize that when we’re talking about Trump eating steak well done and with ketchup we’re not talking about steak, but an attitude — so tasteless, so smothering of taste and so just like his proposed budget and immigration policies and presidential demeanor — but I’m stuck feeling like people who have been outraged when I order a salad without dressing.
Enough of this accrued that The New Yorker published an article on Why Trump’s non-aesthetic eating habits mattered, reading which unwittingly told some things about the class divide in America and attitudes on the Nuevo riche or any rich guy acting as such. Tom Cotton goes on to make a speech about it — elitist late night talkers making fun of Trump eating at McDonalds an assault on us all — interesting to dissect: sure I guess, but nay, you really should not eat much McDonalds.
He served up a table full of fast food at a college championship sports meeting — when a budget impasse had shut down any other symbolically palatable option — the photo of him gesturing at it all immediately symbolic of… Something … An image of Big Boy replacing Trump at the table going viral.
So yes, Trump eating was frequently discussed. The problem, perhaps, was that he could not trump into any ice cream shop in any urban center in America without some resistance — owner running the other way to avoid a photo op with him in frame. That part of the equation comes in to that big difference of “studied boring”Ness from Biden versus Trump’s elbowing everything approach — the two diametrically different approaches that brought each one here in reaction to the other and regardless of policy, but lands at its drawbacks– chief amongst them for Trump that Biden can get in a human interest bit coverage on eating ice cream. Note, Bush at his most controversial and divisive could do a workabout and get ice cream coverage, and indeed at his highest point in 2002 pick and choose anywhere for a folksy local news soft serve presser…