…is over.
Well, actually, it’s been over since Mitt clinched the increasingly poisoned chalice that is his nomination, given his religion’s prohibition on consuming alcohol. (See: Mitt and Osama do/did have something in common…)* But this piece in Mother Jones by Tim Murphy (via Ed Kilgore) captures yet one more reason to believe that Mr. Romney is not in fact a human being, but rather a strangely ill-designed bot intended to simulate human behavior. Consider:
Mitt Romney has a complicated relationship with fast food. He likes pizza, but insists on scraping off the cheese before he ever takes a bite. He likes fried chicken, but only when the skin has been removed. He likes Big Macs, but only after removing the middle bun. He likes Coca-Cola because, he explained in his 2004 book Turnaround, it reminds him of polar bears, but he rarely drinks it because he can’t have caffeine. On the trail, Romney has name-dropped Carl’s Jr. and spoken of the wonders of WaWa but subsists mainly on granola he carries around in one-gallon Ziploc bags.
Anne Laurie blogged on this general topic this morning, quoting Taibbi on how most presidents have some capacity for engaging other human beings — a liberal could enjoy watching football with George Bush and so on.
That seems basically right to me, at least in principle. I’m not sure if I could at this point stand being in the same room with 43, but I can at least see how it might be possible to have a reasonably pleasant interaction watching my team shred whoever it is he supports.
This is more of the same. I’ve spent plenty of time in red states or settings, surrounded by folks who are as different from me politically as it is possible to be, and had absolute common ground in the matter of getting elbows deep in food that’ is gloriously bad for us all. I’ve been taught to suck the heads of crawfish in rural Lousiana with folks with whom I dared not mention politics or faith. I’ve done double duty at one of the true Meccas of American junk food, the Minnesota State Fair, (bacon ice cream? cheeseburger sticks?) where the proposition that there is nothing that can’t be improved by immersion in vats of fat is annually put to the test. I’ve…well, you get the idea, and we have ample evidence from this blog that lots of folks here take enormous pleasure in dining high and low.
But then you read Mitt’s preferences — or rather I do — and what I see there is someone who’s hinky. A bit weird. A control freak and someone deeply uncomfortable — unprepared, even — for the daily reality of, well, just being. And hence, in some deep way, unprepared, unqualified for the job he seeks.
Seriously. Put youself in the scene: imagine you’re waiting at the counter of your favorite joint when Mitt Romney of the Perfect Hair And Teeth walks in. The guy behind the counter hands you a fresh pie, and a few minutes later RMoney gets his.
You grab a slice (the one you have to kind of torque so the cheese doesn’t slide away), and you get that first bite when the cheese hasn’t fully set yet and it’s still hot enough to burn the tongue if you’re not careful, and it has that same satisfaction that one gets from the very first gulp of a very cold beer on a day as hot as it is as I write this — and then you look up and there’s RMoney, delicately picking at the mozzarrella with a fork as he tugs and pulls with precise movements until the surface of what he’s about to eat is pristine, utterly free of dairy products. He completes his task, and all he’s got left is a drooping triangle of bread slathered in tomato goop. A perfectly innocent morsel of wood-fired arterial disease transformed into something miserable, mutilated; almost an atrocity worthy of the folks at the Hague.
By this time, if the “you” here is me, I’m (a) done with my first slice and grabbing more and (b) nervously realizing that there’s something really wrong with the guy next to me. I’d start to edge away from the counter as I watch him consume in perfect, portion controlled bites the entire tomato-crust exercise in pointlessness. Horrified, fascinated, I’d find it hard to pull my eyes off him as he takes the next piece and does it again.
Finally I’d come to my senses. That’s when I grab the counterman’s eye and ask for a take-out box.
All of which is to say that Mitt Romney has all the money it takes to become president and then some. He has the advantage of a complaisant and oligarchic media whose owners have a direct interest in a Romney victory. He has the challenger’s advantage that the economy still sucks while his allies try to make sure that it continues to do so through November. And yet I’m not at all sure he can overcome his greatest problem: he can’t cease being Mitt Romney, and that is someone — or something — that is deeply weird, and not at all in a good way.
Oh — and go read the rest of Murphy’s article; it captures a microcosm of who wants Romney to win and why. The shorter: Romney is the candidate for those who think the minimum wage is and ever was too high.
*BTW — I don’t think I’ve seen it written, and it hasn’t occurred to me till now, but how do the geniuses of the birther crowed line up Barack Hussein Obama’s not Islamic and very public pleasure at hoisting a brew and his Sekret Moooslim status. I mean, I can guess — it’s not a lie if it’s intended to deceive the infidel and all that, but still, I’m not sure there’s enough tin foil in the cosmos to channel the mixed messages those folks must process.
Image: Pieter Breughel the Elder, Peasant Wedding, c. 1587
Xecky Gilchrist
I don’t have a problem with cheeseless pizza – I know plenty of vegan and lactose-intolerant people who prefer it that way – but why not just order it that way?
I also know people who have met both Dubya and Romney. They agree that, whatever else he might be, and despite the fact that they found his presidency abhorrent, Bush is capable of being very charismatic in person. Romney comes across like a robot in any setting.
gene108
Yeah, but Obama eats ice cream out of a cone with a spoon, I’m fucking voting for Romney now!
Craigo
This is sort of shit is just as stupid as when it was used against Kerry or Obama.
If you honestly gave more than two seconds of thought about the pizza-eating habits of Willard Romney, you need to get a fucking life.
Tom Levenson
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Exactly.
Tom Levenson
@Craigo: You may have missed the tell in the title. (Which is to say, remember the Dinsdale brothers.)
Phil Perspective
@Xecky Gilchrist: You are right about ordering that way. Eating it like Romney does is wasteful. Any pizza place that cares about customers will make it to order. And you are right about Dubya. And it’s probably at times where he is talking about sports and nothing of politics.
JPL
food is a touchy subject..
I love the picture. Yesterday I was telling my son about dowry’s and he is in his early thirties. I’ll have to send him the picture of the painting. Thanks.
trollhattan
If Willardbot 2.0 wants to connect with voters by being more like Dubya, he should start by taking up pretzels.
I’ll be in the bar.
J.D. Rhoades
On the one hand, it made me crazy then, so I’m inclined to agree.
OTOH, there’s a certain glee in seeing it applied to the other side for a change.
gene108
@Craigo:
The link Tom quoted is more about how one-sided the fastfood industry is in giving to Republicans. Worth a read.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
you are way overthinking the secret kenyan muslim usurper thing, if they really, really believed that, or were selling it to an awaiting public that did, they would have called ppaca, soetoro care.
as far as romney’s particular issues,i think the best point i can make is that i can’t judge. i really don’t understand a person and a personality that has never had to struggle.
slag
I have no problem with pulling cheese off of pizza or eating ice cream out of a waffle cone with a spoon. So, now I don’t know who to vote for.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Yeah I’m a normal person and I would probably be considered ‘weird’ about food.
-no fast food. Just don’t like it.
-no drinks from big waxed cardboard cups with a straw
-no meat
-Lunch every day: Swiss on toasted whole wheat with wasabi mustard. Or Cheddar.
Dietary peculiarities may be the least of the differences between Mitt and Joe Sixpack.
ETA: and I always get ice cream in a dish rather than a cone. On a stick is fine, though.
Todd
There will be some who will rationalize their Romney votes by deciding that the Corporate Masters will simply release their piles of profits, hire and build while the GOP pols will again release the vise hold on the public coffers with his victory. those who think this way suspect that all that the MOUs and GOPers have been intentionally throttling the economy just to get back into power, and that we should just accede to the demands.
Sad part is, that may not be inaccurate.
Whomever wins 2012 will get decades of credit for the economic bump.
Craigo
@gene108: Which Tom doesn’t mention.
What Tom actually wrote about is how people who don’t share his tastes in food are “deeply weird” and a strange fantasy about eating pizza with Mitt Romney.
Bailey
And yet all the food that Mitt eschews—it’s actually a GOOD thing that he isn’t like most of America and diving into this crap. For as weird and robotic as he is, Mitt is, at least, a sixty-something guy who isn’t, like the vast majority of Americans, obese.
Mitt’s problem is that he can’t be honest why is bad to eat so horrifically. He doesn’t want to be too closely associated with the Kenyan’s wife and all that do-gooder garden business so has to fake as though he’s “real” and loves the fast food even though it is killing us all.
Litlebritdifrnt
He not only seems weird, he is weird. He is a rich wanker who is trying his best to be “a regular guy” and it comes off as phony, completely and utterly staged. I remember a couple of weeks ago when he was talking about that “tall guy” that he met and he assumed “that he was in sport” the MJ crew were about pissing themselves laughing at him, I mean they just couldn’t believe that he had said “sport”, in fact the MJ crew, being the MJ crew, are still pissing themselves laughing about it and never fail to bring it up on a regular basis. Scar uses “sport” now as a shortcut for “totally clueless rich asshole”. It defines Romney, he is fucking clueless.
Spatula
Good god, more of this stupid crap.
What good is it to go from “who would yo uhave a beer with?” to “this guy has takes a bun off a Big Mac” and thus can’t be trusted?
Jayzus.
I don’t care how strange a president is in his or her personal life. I just want progressive policies, aggressively promoted and enacted. That’s not going to happen with Mitt, thus I won’t be voting for him.
I’m guessing Prez O has some funky habits too…who the hell doesn’t? In fact, really smart and creative people are very often the most eccentric and colorful. Who gives a fuck?
It’s enough to tar Mitt with his proposed policies and past performance, why do we have to waste time on this dumb ass personal shit?
lacp
@Spatula: That’s easy – because it’s amusing. And, I dunno about you, but reading and commenting on blogs is a major waste of time that I thoroughly enjoy.
Keith
Pretty sad that John Kerry lost the “Have a beer with” primary to a recovering alcoholic.
General Stuck
Forget about Pierce, Taibbi and the other snarksters. I loves me some trekki Gail Collins.
very true. But Mitt Romney is no Crystalline Entity. But fits the bill for General Telane
MikeJ
Speaking of fastfood, here’s what the campaigns have spent:
Pizza:
Obama: $4643
Romney: $10,185
Other fast food:
Obama: $3109, all Subway
Romney: $1320, mostly McD’s
WereBear
Well, Romney’s weird, no question. But the fast food behavior reminds me of the “star off-menu ordering” most recently satirized in Get Shorty. In short, bigshot Hollywood people always ask for something to be cooked just for them, special.
I’m sympathetic to food issues; I was misdiagnosed as lactose-intolerant and didn’t have dairy for years. I got it straightened out; it was the crackers, not the cheese. Now I have to be one of those gluten-free people; and in a group dining situation, I’m scraping the toppings off the crust.
So I just see this Mitt-fussy thing the same way I see Hollywood bigshots demanding eggwhite omelettes with walrus ears. He has to be special, always.
Tom Levenson
@WereBear: Sounds right to me. See also the coffee ordering scene in LA Story, a sleeper in any funniest comedy discussion.
trollhattan
@Spatula:
The Willard Challenge is can one connect with him ON ANY LEVEL AS A FELLOW AMERICAN/HUMAN BEING? The more I learn about him the less I find it possible. Compare and contrast against, say, Newton. Swear to the king of Kolob, I’d rather have him running the store than Willard.
Why did Politico fire that guy who said Willard is only comfortable around rich white folks, again?
Ed in NJ
Some pretty dense people in this thread, it seems to me. Isn’t the point of this post that Rmoney is so weird with his eating and drinking restrictions that we no longer have to suffer through this “who would you rather have a beer with” nonsense?
JWL
All this regular guy food stuff reminds me of a Simpson’s episode, in which JFK and Nixon pitch Duff Beer in a commercial break during their televised 1960 debate. Kennedy smoothly and with a winning smile endorsed the beer; Nixon nervously, shiftily did the same. Eyes narrowed, Homer then pronounced judgement by saying of Nixon (in a bitterly resentful tone), “That man has never drank a Duff Beer in his life”.
WereBear
@Tom Levenson: Loved that movie. Such as the part where Steve Martin drove next door.
Anya
The question is can willard connect with any human, even the greedy rich fucks?
gene108
@Ed in NJ:
Or a cup of coffee with, either…
mss
There is a fine line between pointing out that Romney’s awkwardness may reveal a lack of depth, life experience, awareness, or whatever else we’d actually like in a leader who has to handle any problem that come down the pike, and pushing the idea that because Mitt’s not just like “normal people” (you know, like me and my friends), he’s too “weird” to be trusted.
This post is a few miles past that line, into grade-school bullying territory.
The objections are obvious, if you think of a friend or family member instead of the loathsome sociopathic greed monster that is Mitt Romney. Think of someone you know with food allergies. It’s not fun explaining that your need to avoid milk, or tomatoes, or food dyes is a urgent medical necessity. It’s not cool to deal with waiters who decide that you can handle a “little”, and give you a fun night doped up on benedryl. Maybe you don’t have food allergies, but I’m sure you have some preferences that buck the norm. I love ice tea, and abhor sweetened tea (it’s a Texas thing, which may surprise you if you think everyone who grows up in the south drinks sweet tea). Does this provide deep insights into my character? There are only about five foods I don’t like, but beer is one. Does that make me unfun? A suitable target for ridicule?
Romney may be a bit lactose intolerant. He follows religious prohibitions on caffeine — are we going to make fun of kosher or halal diets next? And though he won’t admit it (because under a Romney presidency, the presidents true CV would apparently be a state secret), his job title for the last 6 years has been “presidential candidate,” which means endless junk food photo ops. Under the circs, I admire that he’s stuck to a granola diet. I couldn’t do it; I’d blow up like a balloon if I spent six years drifting from one county fair to another.
I’m normally a fan of Tom Levenson’s posts, so I think what this really shows is that “bitch slap” politics — which Mitt’s glass-everything has finally seduced Democrats into playing — brings with it all the dangers that held Democrats back from bitch slapping in the first place. It can happen to the best of us. Staring in the abyss, etc.
Democrats need to play harder ball and this week has mostly been great on that score. But lets not get carried away and stuff Mitt Romney in the locker for sh*t and giggles.
Cassidy
@Ed in NJ: Never be surprised when a purity troll takes the opportunity to make it about themselves. Their narcissism can’t handle anything else.
Beauzeaux
Fried chicken without the skin? You might as well boil it.
(Don’t like pizza, with or without the cheese.)
gene108
@Anya:
He connects well with greedy rich folks. It’s like they’re part of some collective, that’s been assimilated and now believe in the same thing: They must assimilate everyone else to be like them or destroy them in the process.
Redshift
Interesting news: Alabama governor calls on Romney to release all the requested documents, saying if you have something to hide, you’re doing it wrong.
trollhattan
@Anya:
I’ll bet even the dancing pony Pop n Lock (H/T TBogg) bites him if he comes too near.
MikeJ
@mss:
Oh, please. It’s not like we’re holding Mitt down and cutting off his hair.
ploeg
@Tom Levenson: I’ve heard of the Piranha brothers (Doug and Dinsdale), but not the Dinsdale brothers. And I’m having a hard time linking the title to the Piranha brothers either. But then, it’s Saturday and I’ve turned my brain off.
eemom
That, sir, is a delightful morsel of prose.
Your general thesis here resonates with me on a primordial, nursery rhyme level. Whenever people talk about how much money Romtron has, and the vast might of the forces of plutocratic evil marshalled on his behalf, before which we all ought to tremble and quake, I always come back to my own little paraphrase of Humpty Dumpty: All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men, can’t make Mitt Romney a human be-ing.
mss
@MikeJ Really?
Do I need to insert irony tags?
Spatula
@trollhattan:
Kind of goes back to my original point though. I don’t really care if I “connect with” a candidate. If I do, it’ sonly going to be in my mind anyway; who of us has dinner at the Obama white house or plays tennis with them on a regular basis?
This is why candidates end up doing stupid, fake stunts to seem to relatable to “the people.” It’s all for show anyway.
I would love an aggressively unabashedly progressive prez who pulls the cheese off his pizza.
ploeg
@Xecky Gilchrist: It’s like I tell my brother-in-law, “Come on, cheese is just curdled milk!”
wiscomom
We will be seeing lots of photo ops of Obama drinking beers with the regular folks at the local bar. His visit through Ohio last week included photos with both Budweisers and Millers, not to offend any one you know.
His pitch perfect recollection of getting ice from the ice machine at Howard Johnson’s as a kid on a summer road trip fits into this narrative too. It’s about being one of us. Mitt can’t do it. All he can say is the trees are the right height. There’s no Middle America there there.
The RW can’t even mention arugula or anything these days.
Go to Buzzfeed and view the pics of Mitt sitting around on the shore at his NH estate today and riding his grand kids in his big boat. Contrast with pics of Obama meeting people in the pouring rain. This is the rest of Mitt’s political life in optics. Doesn’t look good.
Dan
The weird food tics are the first thing I’ve read about Romney that come close to humanizing him. His weirdness is oddly endearing. It’s the destructive
Nature of the policies he supports that’s the problem.
trollhattan
@mss:
Dancing ponyshit. Save the concern for inner-city folks with those medical issues who only have shitty fast food places to eat at, then are left to consume that portion that doesn’t make them (immediately) sick.
Who chronically orders the same food over and over–ignoring a universe of alternatives available to them–only to pick it apart and discard the bits they don’t like? Idiots, that’s who.
Suezboo
In Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, the Doctor relates how he and Tricky Dick totally bonded on a car trip over a football discussion. And we all know how HST felt about Nixon.So it’s possible to bond over beer, food, whatever.
Spatula
@Dan:
Hello.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
I’ve read that Bush the Elder didn’t really hate broccoli and like fried pork skins. They just made that up to connect with regular Joes.
Reagan and Jelly Bellies: same deal.
karen marie
On the topic of the painting, I’m thrilled to see this as I am reading a novel about Pieter Bruegel (not Breughel) the Elder by Rudy Rucker titled As Above, So Below and enjoying it quite a bit. Rucker delightfully and engrossingly brings the man, his art and his time to life. Not much is actually known about Bruegel’s life, so only the rough sketch is true, the details are surmise and conjecture on Rucker’s part. There was a lot of destruction going on in the mid 15th century Low Lands and elsewhere, so whatever papers existed are long gone and Bruegel wasn’t held in particularly high esteem in the centuries since he lived, until the 20th century, so there were no contemporaneous or near contemporaneous biographies written about him. I was very surprised to find this in the library because I knew Rucker only as a science fiction writer.
Anya
@gene108: @trollhattan: Ha
mss
@trollhatten
My concern isn’t for Mitt Romney (and if you couldn’t figure that out, heaven help you). My concern is for advocates of the inner city poor, etc., who decide that they’re going to write blog posts about their opponents icky taste in food. And for the message this sort of conformist bullshit sends to anyone who doesn’t quite fit in with social norms — which describes most anyone I’ve met actually doing something for poor people.
But dancing ponyshit’s nice. You must have an impressive verbal arsenal is you’re wasting that kind of imagery over this.
different-church-lady
Who knew that when Wingnuttia embraced the elitist mustard meme it was going to backfire on them?
different-church-lady
@Ed in NJ:
You obviously have no idea how Calvinball is played.
MoeLarryAndJesus
@Craigo:
Someone stupid enough to take more than two seconds to post such a thing needs to get a fucking brain and a fucking life.
Hal
You’ve been acting awful tough lately
Smoking a lot of cigarettes lately
But inside, you’re just a little baby
It’s okay to say you’ve got a weak spot
You don’t always have to be on top
Better to be hated than love, love, loved for what you’re not
You’re vulnerable, you’re vulnerable
You are not a robot
You’re loveable, so loveable
But you’re just troubled
Guess what? I’m not a robot, a robot
Guess what? I’m not a robot, a robot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkrk3lFVuQE
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@mss:
mikej secretes bloody puss over a certain segment of the commentariat here. small penis issues i reckon.
Litlebritdifrnt
@wiscomom:
As ABL pointed out in a post over at her place, only Obama (via Michelle) would be savvy enough to apologize to a bunch of ladies who have waited in the rain all day to see him that their hair dos were ruined. As ABL (and MHP on one of her shows) so brilliantly pointed out, rain (or water of any kind) will completely and utterly wreck a black woman’s hairdo completely.
The bottom line is HE CONNECTS to people on the most basic level, I will never forget the “you have gotta stop feeding your kids Popeyes for breakfast” line in 2008.
Romney couldn’t connect to regular folk if they hard wired his brain and plugged him into the juke box at the local diner.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Go back to Windsor, commie!
(I’ll take this back if you confess your addiction to Faygo Red Pop.)
different-church-lady
Just read all the comments: man, there are a lot of people around here who don’t understand the ironic voice.
Derp
mss:
Yes. SATSQ.
Southern Beale
Not that anyone would want to have a beer with Mitt Romney? But if you did? You couldn’t. Because he doesn’t drink beer, because he’s Mormon. And that’s weird.
Also, even if he did drink beer? And wasn’t Mormon? He wouldn’t have a beer with you. Because you’re a fucking peon and he’s a rich asshole, and unless you’re there to clean the pool or mow the lawn, he isn’t gonna have jack to do with you.
C’mon.
Ash Can
@mss: I agree. The main point here, of course, is that Romney has a likeability/connectability problem, and it doesn’t bode well for winning the vast numbers of “average Joe” votes he’d need to win the election. But the surfeit of detail on his oddball habits is a bit distracting, and Tom’s pizza tangent strikes me as little more than piling on. We get the picture (and long since agreed with it), so why belabor it? Better to put it in the context of, say, how Romney polls with blue-collar voters or how he polls in a place such as New Jersey. Harping solely on his mannerisms gets tedious after the first few sentences.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@different-church-lady:
Post needs new tagline: “Engage Snark Detector”.
Southern Beale
Also, my Mormon relatives do not drink Coca Cola because it has caffeine in it. The only soft drinks they consume are 7Up which is decaffeinated.
Litlebritdifrnt
Yet more “rules are for little people”
Check out this link
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/mitt-romney-at-leisure-12-pictures-from-his-day-o
Shot #4 would get anyone a ticket here in NC. Kids (whether wearing a lifejacket or not) are NEVER allowed to ride on the prow of a boat. It is incredibly dangerous.
Todd
At what point does Mitt start singing “Daisy”?
Cain
@gene108:
I was at a local ice cream parlour and I saw many people eating ice cream cone with a spoon. You can do that because the waffle cones are fairly wide so it works just like a cup.
I am hoping one of the villagers will ding Romney for not taking a vacation at Pebble Beach since that is where all the normal Americans go for vacation.
Southern Beale
And also, shit like scraping the cheese off your pizza or removing the bun from your burger is exactly the kind of stuff conservatives slammed John Kerry for.
So I at least am glad the shoe is on the other foot. It’s like Mitt Romney is John Kerry after having his soul removed.
Violet
@different-church-lady: Seems like just about everything Greater Wingnuttia has been going on about for decades is backfiring on them this time.
Mitt’s a terrible candidate for these times because he’s the very epitome of everything people hate right now–a rich, entitle, to-the-manner-born bankster/takeover king/CEO. He’s destroyed jobs and lives and made off like a bandit, even though he was rich before he ever started.
People HATE people like him. They hate what they’ve done and what they stand for. And there’s poor Mitt trying to be just a candidate standing in front of an electorate, asking them to like him. Not gonna happen.
karen marie
@wiscomom: Although as a child Obama spent several years overseas, he was never isolated from the experiences of average people. That can’t be said about Romney.
Ash Can
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yeah, I guess so. It just kind of fell flat for me, and evidently I’m not the only one.
Anoniminous
@Redshift:
That makes it A Story. Even by the criteria of that GOP knobslobbing cretin at WaPo.
Southern Beale
Great food faux pas from history:
Yes, I’m quite certain that’s why Kerry lost.
different-church-lady
@Violet: Precisely: he’s literally 180 degrees out of phase with the zeitgeist.
On top of that, the GOP spent years honing their “Beer with the Skipper” shtick and then went and nominated Thurston Howell III.
Steeplejack
When you match Romney’s finicky food habits and his generally “off” affect with the fact that he is 65 years old, you start to get close to “that crazy old uncle the whole family laughs about” territory—except for the fact that he’s rich as Croesus and is running for president. Seriously, how much of a passs does he get on all the weirdness because everyone knows (a) he’s extremely rich and (b) the rich are not like you and me?
PaminBB
I think that this post makes the point that the Mittbot does not reside in the same world as the rest of us. Off the campaign trail, he has spent pretty much ZERO time perusing fast food restaurant menus.
I can’t get beyond his reaction about being offered cookies back in April near Pittsburgh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAw3Ieyil-E&feature=related
If he had dietary issues, his advance people should get things straight. If he just doesn’t want a cookie, normal people know how to decline something politely.
Mittbot does not reside in the same world as the rest of us.
Citizen Alan
@Craigo:
When was “this sort of shit” used against Kerry or Obama? The closest comparable thing I remember used against Kerry was “wind-surfing” which is a perfectly legitimate leisure activity, albeit unusual for someone of his age and stuffiness. The worst thing they ever came up with about Obama in this vein was that he can’t bowl! Neither of those are remotely as “weird” as ordering pizza and then picking all the cheese off of it. Honestly, it hints at some kind of OCD.
MonkeyBoy
If I came across Romney in person eating something it would probably be boring and he would be either sheepish, defensive, or falsely hearty about it e.g. “Doesn’t everybody love hamburgers”.
If I came across Obama in person eating a tomato and arugula sandwich he would urge me to try it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ash Can:
I thought it was right there in the post’s title. I will defer to different church lady, who clarified this in the interim.
Citizen Alan
@mss:
Would it be permissible to hold him down and cut his hair against his will? Mittens seems to have been okay with that in the past.
rumpole
Couple of things–
1. his dietary habits are a cheap shot. Lots of other reasons to dislike him.
2. Nonetheless, Obama was alien because he eats arugula. As opposed to carrying around a bag of secret granola (no doubt made of ground fetal bones from the company Bain acquired).
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan: Kerry was zinged for ordering Swiss cheese on his cheesesteak (which actually isn’t weird, IMHO, and I lived in Philly for 12 years). Obama was bopped for ordering orange juice at a diner and for asking for Dijon mustard on a cheeseburger. There’s a sadly long list of these kinds of things. Bob Somerby has chronicled them, and they drive him completely mental. (well, on the other hand, it didn’t take much of a push to do that.)
Rich (In name only) in Reno
RE: the McDonald’s Big Mac reference
Years ago, I worked for a while as a security guard, what I like to refer to as my “running dog lackey for the capitalist oppressor” period, and the retail/office building where I was posted had a McDonald’s. (Hint; it appears in a Malcolm McDowell movie.) The McDonald’s generated tons of trash, and needed to use the building’s freight elevator for trips down to the trash compactor room constantly. Some of the more enterprising among the guard staff worked out a deal whereby, in exchange for unfettered access to the freight elevator, the Slaves of Mickey-Dee would give us bags of unsold burgers and fries at closing time. The burgers were generally cold, soggy, and somewhat compacted, but edible. I’m not ashamed to admit that on occasion I partook of these; I was being paid $5.25 per hour back then.
When the burger bags made their way to the locker room, one of my co-workers would zero in on the Big Macs, and he, like Der Mittster, would remove the middle bun. He referred to this operation as “removing the Kotex.”
FlipYrWhig
@mss:
Maybe not the lack of beer, but something appears to have done it… :P
The Other Bob
@Xecky Gilchrist:
There is more to it than that. Food is very personal. My wife is vegan, my kids are being raised vegetarian. To many people, we might as well worship the devil and be pedophiles. To many we are perpetrating a crime against humanity them because my kids don’t eat meat.
If Romeny is vegan, he loses a cople percentage points minimum.
FlipYrWhig
@Rich (In name only) in Reno: Ah… Mitt has a grease aversion, then…
pk
This is just silly. It doesn’t matter what Mitt does or does not eat. In fact I don’t blame him for avoiding the disgusting swill which passes for food in most fast food places. And if you think there is something wrong with a person who takes the cheese off a pizza and picks at it, enough for you to leave the place then you need to grow up.
mss
@Citizen Alan:
I’m impressed you could find Mitt’s moral compass. Does it have an “if lost, please return” tag? Or was it tied to a rock at the bottom of Lake Erie?
There is a difference between snark and assholery. When I visit my conservative in-laws, every “joke” ends with a insult to some despised group (the educated, the poor), rather than a punchline. Snark that relies on the same kind of “humor” (but substitute, say, Mormons) is not a road we need to go down.
But go ahead, attack the worst, most selfish, clueless, inept, and manifestly shallow major candidate in US history because he eats his pizza in a lame way.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mss:
Jebus.
If you just admit that you didn’t spot the snark, I’ll concede that the snark might have been as hard to spot as was Waldo that time he went to the knit hat trade show. We can request that the poster pull a DougJ and publish here as Tom Not Captain Obvious Levenson.
Deal?
JustAnotherBob
Next trip to town I’m getting me an ice cream cone and a spoon.
And then I’m going to smile and say ‘Hi’ to all the Republican looking folks as I enjoy my mint chip….
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ve wondered for a while if Rmoney might not have something like asperger’s syndrome. I don’t know how well people with asperger’s can handle the kind of work Rmoney did when he earned all his boatloads of (r)money, but from what I understand, it’s mostly only dealing with people that asperger’s people have a hard time with, not purely mental stuff like calculations.
All I do know is that Rmoney not only seems to have trouble with people, and doesn’t seem to understand how what I’ll call for lack of a better word normal people react to what he does and says, but he seems to really not even like being around people. He seems all right, more or less, giving speeches, aside from not knowing how to give the speech in a way that’s anything like how I, at least, would think a normal person would give it. But when he’s up there speaking to a crowd, he’s, well, up there. He’s safely far, far away from the unpredictible and slightly threatening mass of wills and needs and wants and fears that he doesn’t seem to understand.
But when he’s dealing with people on the ground, watching in horror as they come up to him, as they stick their hands ot to shake his, as they loom up to touch him, well, then he seems kind of lost. I’ve seen clips of him where somebody asks him something. He answers it woodenly, without seeming to give any thought to it at all. He just spouts off the particular string of words somebody told him to say when he hears this cue or that cue. Sometimes the asker isn’t happy with the lame-O answer Rmoney gives, and prods further, and then Rmoney just turns away and robotically begins his approximation of “talking” to somebody else, oblivious to the first person’s frustration.
It’s all so weird. I don’t mean to knock people with asperger’s. I know it must be tough. And I’ve never known anybody with it, so maybe my thoughts are way off. But from what I’ve read about it, I wonder if Rmoney might really have it. I’ve read that people with asperger’s can be off-putting to others, and he surely is that. I’ve read that they can come to need lots of control over the parts of the world they can control, to offset the bewildering and incomprehensible sea of people they can’t control, and whose words and deeds and very being can be so utterly befuddling. If the guy has asperger’s, then I feel bad for him. I can understand how tough it must be to deal with that. But politics seems like an awfully weird way for somebody who doesn’t understand other people to leave his mark on the world.
mss
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Yeah, snark spotted straight off. Kind of hard to miss. But also spotted: How far can we push borrowing from the GOP playbook? They call it snark too. Or “just a joke.”
I’ve had enough of this; you can look over the thread to see that a number of other people find this gross, and I doubt many of them missed the snarky “our turn to spread the elitist mustard” vibe. It’s disgusting nonetheless, or exceptionally poorly conceived.
Spatula
@Violet:
So…is that why he is only a few percentage points behind PBO in the polls? Cause people hate him and everyone like him?
:P
Spatula
@Citizen Alan:
Kerry was excoriated for ordering a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich in Philadelphia with the wrong kind of fucking cheese.
It was a big deal.
This is the dumbest country in the world. Like a drunken child…stumbling around the globe.
You like this food story, dumb as it is, because it favors YOUR side; doesn’t make it any less dumb than before.
JoyceH
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I think that explains something that occurred to me recently – here it is, mid-summer of an election year, and so far as I can tell, NO ONE has come forward to claim, even falsely, that they had sex with Mitt Romney!
EVERY national politician has at least one of these. Even Bush had one, though it was obvious the poor woman was mental. But there’s Romney, and on the surface you’d think he presents as fairly attractive, and yet even the crazy ladies aren’t imagining that they once had sex with him.
muddy
@JustAnotherBob: I always get a tasting spoon with my ice cream cone when I walk the dog in the evening. I share with him, but don’t care to trade licks. Of course I am plunging the dog’s spoon back into the ice cream each time, but it doesn’t seem quite as disgusting that way. Passersby are always charmed by it. Weirdly, the dog’s favorite flavor is ginger.
pseudonymous in nc
@pk:
It matters to the idiots covering the campaign from the press bus — but only if they decide that it matters.
CW in LA
@Spatula: The self-righteous is strong in this one.
Still, as painful as it is to defend Citizen Bain (by all the gods I love that), when he’s taking the cheese off the pizza, is it an individual pizza, or one big enough for several people? I can see where a two or more people would just get a pizza, and then whoever didn’t want the cheese could just take theirs off.
This is not part of a compelling case against what seems to me a truly unimpressive man. Still, after Arugulagate, Mustardgate, etc., etc., I have a hard time feeling too badly about it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mss:
I don’t buy it. I read that original comment you made, in which you spent the time theorizing on the possible reasoning behind Romney’s many dietary choices yet failed to acknowledge those many choices as a metaphor (a humorously OTT metaphor, to be sure) for the very real lack of connection- likes to fire people, has numerous offshore bank accounts, gets softballs tossed to him when caught in lies, etc.- Romney has with the average voter.
The irony within (and between the lines) is that when the GOP used swiss cheese and windsurfing against Kerry, there was no metaphor: Swiss cheese and windsurfing were the problem. Sure, it was meant as metaphor, but they couldn’t really point out the actual disconnect that Kerry had with the vast majority of the populace.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@different-church-lady:
Obama the master politician again. He deliberately brought his taste for Elitist Mustard up in his own biography as an example of the stupid meaningless crap they people fuss about.
As for Mittens the finkey eater, oddly not surprising. He comes across as the kind of guy who everything has to be just right for him or he throws a hissy. If Mittens get’s elected the comedy is going to be fast and hard as this self absorbed navel gazer has to lead a country.
kerFuFFler
@Spatula:
Because a lot of people hate black people more!
General Stuck
@efgoldman:
LOL “Quantum Politician”/ I likes it, but didn’t like physics back in the day.
different-church-lady
Rich (In name only) in Reno:
If you had a job you’d be paid more.
/ironic voice
@mss:
Not at all. It merely makes you unelectable in the eyes of the fourth estate.
different-church-lady
@The Other Bob:
Heck, just go with the flow.
Heliopause
I could never run for office. It’s not just all the embarrassing things I’ve ever done, it’s that I have a similar relationship to food as Romney, so the press would be constantly hassling me over my choices.
I like pizza but can’t eat it. I can’t eat more than a bite or two of cheese without suffering consequences that last for days. Those of you who don’t suffer this problem, count your blessings. Though no, it would never occur to me to scrape the cheese off a pizza.
Most of the time I eat chicken that has had the skin removed and then been baked. I eat fried as an occasional luxury. I’m not twenty years old anymore.
OK, that one I don’t get.
I like it too but limit my intake of sugary sodas.
Too expensive for what you get, which is only half a tick better than other mass market burgers.
I’m also nauseated by breakfast foods (this is not hyperbole, I’m literally nauseated by the smell of eggs and coffee) so the All-American diner routine would be right out of my campaign.
Thank you for this interesting post. I discovered that, incredibly, I have something in common with Mitt Romney. Time for a shower.
different-church-lady
You know why people eat ice cream out of cones with spoons? Because nowadays your modern gourmet waffle cone is as big as a bowl.
Mike G
The chicken skin and cheese stuff I can kind of understand on unhealthiness grounds, but this is just WTF.
mss
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I’m going to try to read your comment in good faith as the same mistake applied twice: you still aren’t getting what I wrote, or what it points out in the OP.
My post wasn’t about why Mitt Romney eats food the way he does, but why many people — with food allergies, with religious restrictions, with tastes that haven’t met your personal approval — actually do the same damn things. I couldn’t care less if Romney is one of them, and am depressed that a journalist would think it worth finding out, frankly. My problem the Republican frame Levenson enforces (whether you call it snark or not) that there’s a right way to eat, and if you don’t do it that way, you deserve to be shunned, ridiculed, generally treated as undeserving of empathy. It’s a tribal, bullying argument that demeans the person leveling it regardless of the target. And using as a metaphor for legitimate criticisms of Romney’s out-of-touch behavior only makes it easier to dismiss them for being tarred with juvenile name-calling.
I looked back at Levenson’s piece, and damned if it’s hard to read this as doing anything but reinforcing the frame. To continue his thought experiment about sitting in a pizza joint, if I was with a guy who made fun of how a stranger at another table took cheese off his pizza, I’d find a new dining partner.
By the way, I think you may be confused about how metaphors work. There’s no requirement that either the symbol or the referent be true. So yeah, this is pretty much *exactly* the same thing the GOP did with Kerry, only Mitt actually *is* Thurston Howell III in real life. But we might as well consider the class war lost if we have to explain that with pizza topping preferences.
Comrade Mary
So I’m on deadline, I’ve been working all day, and I’ve had to delay seeing Le Guy until next weekend. I am now starting A Beer because the brain, she needs a rest and I’ll start work again tomorrow at 8 AM.
Who wants to (virtually) have a beer with me?
Mnemosyne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I think I have to give that half a “meh.” If you scroll down to see the rest of the pictures, there is actual seating in (at?) the prow — they’re not just laying on top of the boat. *
Though there really should be someone over the age of 10 with that group of kids at the front of the boat to supervise them.
(*) My lack of nautical knowledge is really handicapping me here — short version, there are seats at the front for them to sit in, they’re not just laying on the hood of the boat shouting “Faster!” like my brothers used to do.
NotMax
@Comrade Mary
Sláinte.
Will lift a virtual martini, though. At my age, beer gives me more gas than it is worth to quaff it.
different-church-lady
@mss: He’s not mocking Romeny, he’s mocking the media that presents this shit as important. He’s not reinforcing the frame, he’s mocking the frame.
Okay, he’s mocking Romney a little too, but that’s not the point of the piece.
stickler
Before people start hyperventilating about how mean Mr. Levinson is being to poor, poor Mitt Rmoney, let’s all remember a couple of things:
1. The GOP has been doing this, constantly, for decades now, and on some level IT WORKS. Is it fair? Does it comport with the Marquess of Queensbury rules? Um, no. But to repeat myself, IT WORKS. Remember those porcine GOP delegates at the RNC in 2004, wearing Band-Aids with purple hears drawn in, making fun of Kerry for having been wounded, but NOT WOUNDED ENOUGH, in actual real live COMBAT?
2. The Democrats have played the game as though this sort of stuff was beneath them, for decades, at least since LBJ passed from the scene. Bitch-slap politics may be nauseating, but taking these trite insults in silence does indeed make the candidate look weak. Running for Congress, LBJ once did this: “Who can forget the story of one of Lyndon Johnson’s early Congressional campaigns in which he spread the rumor that his opponent had sexual relations with barnyard animals. “It couldn’t possibly be true!” a staffer complained. “I know,” said Lyndon, “but let’s make the bastard deny it.””
3. Mitt Romney is weird in a way that lots of Americans will find relevant and important. He’s Daddy Warbucks with none of the charm. He’s a genuinely terrible political candidate for a country that, for good or ill, has a lot of voters who want the President to be an “ordinary guy” who “feels their pain.” Obama and the DNC would be criminally negligent not to hammer him on this all day, every day, until November. If you genuinely think the dude’s policies would be bad for America, and pointing out that he eats his pizza wrong helps keep him out of the White House, then by God that’s what you do.
Heliopause
@different-church-lady:
I think Tom’s point was that
and it’s frankly bullshit. In this realm Romney is merely doing what any privileged individual would do, and that’s indulge his food preferences. You’d do exactly the same, and you’re a liar if you pretend otherwise. In fact, by world standards, all of us are privileged and indulging food preferences that are extremely unrealistic in the history of our species.
There isn’t anything “weird” about Mitt Romney’s food choices (well, except for the Big Mac bun thing). What’s “weird” (actually not weird, disturbing) is the system which promulgates him as a candidate for leadership. I realize that for electoral purposes we’ll be selling him as “weird”, but that doesn’t mean that those of us in the blog comment sections are obligated to swallow this blatant political spin.
Another Halocene Human
@Southern Beale:
Yes.
Raya
The post is labeled right up front as “The Have A Beer With Primary …. Is Over.” As in, a thing of the past. As in, since one candidate not only can’t have a beer with anyone, but can’t eat a single one of the proverbial Real ‘Murkin’s favorite foods without first rendering it unrecognizable, and since he plays for the team that decided to make this a thing in the first place, the New Rule is going to be that this is no longer a thing.
The whole point of the post, as I read it anyway, is to mock the fact that the Rovians have been and gone and picked a candidate who can’t play by the schoolyard rules they made up for mocking Democratic candidates. So sad for them.
The point of the post is NOT to make fun of Mitt Romney, except in the general sense that this is yet another ting that makes him a poor fit with his “base” of rabid anti-elitists.
seaboogie
Hey – remember when the Repub primaries were just getting started and Obama’s team – betting on him winning – called him out as “weird” and there was this great big hue and cry over that being an attack on his Mormonism? Now, these many months of being a witness to his Mittness, we can all agree that he is super-weird – oh, and also a big fat liar. Loved the new Obama ad, almost wish I lived in a swing state so we would get to see it all the time – absolutely made my day today!
Another Halocene Human
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Here’s the thing about people with Asperger’s. It’s not that they can’t handle people per se. It’s that they have a social learning disorder. There are people walking around with Asperger’s that you would never know had it because someone cared enough to teach them how to fit in properly.
Here’s the kicker: someone who was isolated from other children as a child or who never had to conform and who maybe had parents who were absent in some way, that person will behave like the most obvious case of Asperger’s. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW AN INCOMPLETELY SOCIALIZED PERSON BEHAVES.
Another Halocene Human
@Raya: I’m thinking this post would have been more effective without the pizza-eating-dream drum solo. It confused everyone and didn’t “work” artistically.
Steeplejack
@Another Halocene Human:
Drum solos never work.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
I can understand pizza without cheese. I am not lactose intolerant (something which I am eternally grateful to the creator or my evolutionary forebears for) but can understand wanting to enjoy a food that is universally praised and very popular, but not wanting to go through the resulting intestinal distress.
But . . . picking the skin of fried chicken? The skin is the best part. If you’re going to pick it off you might as well have ordered baked chicken.