Apparently, McCain is going to play the Arugula card against Obama in the general:
There was a time, not so long ago, when the advisers to John McCain worried a great deal about running against Barack Obama.(...)
But lately, McCain aides have been making gleeful jokes about Obama. On the campaign trail, at dinner with reporters, they sometimes order the arugula salad, poking fun at some comments Obama made last summer in Iowa ("Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?").
Newsweek seems pretty gleeful about this line of attack themselves, with a cover that pits arugula vs. beer as a means of demonstrating "Obama's Bubba gap." (Yes, really--the "Bubba" gap). Now, I don't mean to alarm Newsweek or anything, but last night I actually had both arugula and beer. Seriously. Here is the beer (apologies for posting a picture of beer at 11 a.m.):
Yeah, it's some fruity Belgian beer with pear syrup and honey in it. It is a bit different than my usual tastes, as normally I just drink whatever local Philadelphia-area beer that I am in the mood for. But hey, I'm sure the sort of beer I had last night wasn't exactly the sort of beer that Newsweek has in mind in its elite vs. common consumer good comparison. Only certain types of beer mean that you are truly not elitist. I bet Yuengling, the most popular beer in Philadelphia, is probably even too elitist for this comparison.
There is a larger point behind these elite goods vs. working class goods arguments that I think Kevin Drum gets at pretty well in his post on the Newsweek article. Comparisons of this nature always have a not so subtle message that purchasing consumer goods in a manner that is economically sustainable for your local region, environmentally sustainable in general, demonstrative of a curiosity toward and acceptance of other lifestyles and cultures, and, of course, personally healthy actually makes you an elitist. In other words, purchasing goods in a progressive manner is itself elitist, whereas purchasing goods in a less sustainable manner that suits enormous corporations makes you a populist.
It is the same sort of twisted logic that makes you an elitist by voting for candidates who want to broadly redistribute wealth or expand civil rights and liberties. Or, more crudely, the same sort of twisted logic that currently makes you an elitist because you voted for the black guy. I don't know exactly when underdogs, small business people, alternative lifestyles and cultural minorities became the elites, but it seems to be a permanent fixture of conservative ideology in the post-civil rights era. Comparisons like "arugula track vs. beer track" is one manifestation of that ideology. |
