New York's food editors yesterday took a less thoughtful approach reacting to a piece in The New York Times on the eating preferences of the voting public.
The Times piece is best summarized as such:
The Bush team studied food preferences, among dozens of other traits, as a shortcut to finding independents who might lean Republican, he said.
For example, Dr Pepper is a Republican soda. Pepsi-Cola and Sprite are Democratic. So are most clear liquors, like gin and vodka, along with white wine and Evian water. Republicans skew toward brown liquors like bourbon or scotch, red wine and Fiji water.
When it comes to fried chicken, he said, Democrats prefer Popeyes and Republicans Chick-fil-A.
Click through to get your fill of how New York misinterprets this...
And Grub Street's retort:
But "Democrats prefer Popeye's and Republicans Chick-fil-A"? Really? Then why aren’t there as many Chick-fil-A outlets as there are Popeye’s? (And, anyway, anyone who would prefer Chick-fil-A to Popeye’s doesn’t deserve the right to vote.) These kind of broad-gauge cultural generalizations are all right as knowing jokes in Vanity Fair or on The Daily Show, but when applied to the democratic process, they are grotesque.
From The Economist:
One company warmly approved of by Evangelicals is Chick-fil-A, a chain of chicken restaurants whose management is so devout that it closes all its restaurants on Sundays. This is not a strategy that would be recommended at the average business school. But it has proved no bar to the success of Chick-fil-A, which racked up sales of $1.74 billion last year across the United States. The company is now one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in America, but proclaims that its "first priority...has never been just to serve chicken. It is to serve a higher calling." Its story is explained by the company founder S.Truett Cathy, in his book, "Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People."
Christianity has always been central to the purpose of Chick-fil-A.
Now if we had to take a wild guess how Evangelicals voted... And never even mind that for a second, let's think about where our local Chick-fil-A's are: High-end suburban malls from Menlo Park to King of Prussia.
What about Popeye's? Again staying local, look how many are in Harlem and The Bronx alone. How do you think those residents vote? These aren't broad-gauge generalizations, these are facts. Popeye's moves into poor urban areas. Of the three around me on the west side of the Hudson alone, they're in Newport and Hudson malls, not quite on par with Short Hills, and the third in a poorer end of Bayonne, their window advertising focusing on Spanish-speaking clientele.
Now how about Dr. Pepper as a Republican soda and Sprite for Democrats? It's the same thing all over again.
Dr. Pepper was born from a German pharmacist in a Texas drug store in the 19th Century and long remained a regional drink with limited availability, even now only available in little more than thirty states. In the past their ad campaigns have featured Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire and LeAnn Rimes. If Dr. Pepper's using such artists to appeal to their base, don't you think their base might overlap with Republicans?
And what about Sprite? Do you ever see Sprite ads that don't appeal to an African American clientele? Past ad campaigns have included LeBron James, Grant Hill, Reno Wilson and Kris Kross. Ever see it endorsed by a celebrity who wasn't black? Or for that matter 7-Up, another clear lemon-lime soda whose one-time spokesman Geoffrey Holder was the first ever African-American spokesman for a soft drink. Now 7-Up uses the comic Godfrey. So if African Americans are the target market of these beverages and African Americans vote 90% Democratic...
This isn't that hard to understand. And as for Republicans hitting the hard stuff, going brown while Democrats like wine, gin and vodka? Let's go back to the origin of cocktails born in the history of politics:
The first time the word cocktail appeared in print was in The Balance and Columbian Register on May 13, 1806. Its appearance was in response to a letter to the editor who had never heard of such a spirit. in the editor's response it was defined as thus:
Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters--it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.
So from the start of the 19th century, if only tongue in cheek, the mixed drink was associated by the media with Democrats who would use such a spirit to fool their constituents into voting for them.
Thirty-four years later during the Whig candidate - the Whig party born from the National Republican party in opposition to the Democrats of their day - William Henry Harrison's successful campaign for the White House, Harrison traveled around the country meeting with voters, drinking and serving hard cider to them at every campaign stop which served two purposes; it was the drink of the common man at the time and it better associated him with the masses and it got everyone wasted at every stop, turning stump speeches into parties and preventing any serious challenges from the crowd. ultimately it's believed he won the election of 1840 on a platform of hard cider.
Not such a joke after all.