Monday, July 21, 2008

Come On

Again with the candidates and their eating habits, this time courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

Political commentators are busy analyzing and psychoanalyzing the presidential candidates' words for hints about the real Barack Obama and John McCain. We gastronomers have a better way of penetrating the campaign spin. We take the time-honored approach of that proto-food-blogger Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), who said: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

At the very least, we believe that a candidate's taste in food is a more reliable indicator of character than the carefully strained statements issued in the current atmosphere of gotcha and gotcha back. So we have worked our sources and come up with the names of the candidates' favorite restaurants in their home states. We have tried them out and assessed what an appetite for their particular offerings might mean about two men with a 50-50 chance at spending the next four years ordering meals from the White House chef.


Can we move off this subject now? Why on earth would I pick a candidate based on--or even be interested in--their taste in restaurants?

I already know that John McCain likes to grill and that his campaign lifted a cookie recipe from the Food Network's website, and that Barack Obama is a fussy eater. Now both of them are pizza fans. Wow! That's so unusual. The only good thing about this article is that I now know some good restaurants in Chicago and Arizona.

2 comments:

John said...

This obsession with what candidates eat is just silly. I say we bring on the serious indicators: Have both candidates take a "Which Sex and the City character are you?" quiz online. Then a vote for Obama will be a vote for Samantha (or Carrie or Miranda or the other one.) Perhaps the Sorting Hat quiz would make even more sense, and then you'd have people showing up to the voting booth wearing their red-and-yellow scarves.

Honestly, if a person is still so undecided that s/he is trying to decide who to vote for based on food choices, it's time to just flip a coin and be done with it.

petpluto said...

Hee! As sad as it is, this is how people vote. I read an article a while ago about how pet lovers vote according to candidate pet ownership, feeling that the guy who owns their pet must be closer to their views. Which is why I really, really, really fear for our country's future.

I do like John's idea though. I would definitely vote for a candidate based on how he did on a Sorting Hat quiz. Slytherins are a no-go!