{"id":1509,"date":"2004-08-04T21:19:11","date_gmt":"2004-08-05T01:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/08\/04\/cookies-and-bikes-and-guns\/"},"modified":"2004-08-04T21:19:11","modified_gmt":"2004-08-05T01:19:11","slug":"cookies-and-bikes-and-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/08\/04\/cookies-and-bikes-and-guns\/","title":{"rendered":"Cookies and bikes and guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I post over at Command Post <\/a>every
\nlittle while.  For those of you who don’t know what the site is,
\nit’s a place where contributors can put up news items of interests in
\nthe vital questions of the day.<\/p>\n

So I posted the bike story from below earlier today over there, and the responses were quite varied<\/a>.  You should know that the people over at CP take their politics very seriously<\/em>. 
\nOne guy wondered why Kerry can spring $8000 for a good bike, but claims
\nto hunt with a very poor double-barrel shotgun.  He suspects
\npandering, and I’m inclined to agree (if the fellow’s info is right,
\nand I have no reason to doubt) that it’s at the very least not a very
\ngood representation.<\/p>\n

Another person had the following to say<\/p>\n

\n

Family Circle Magazine runs a COOKIE COOKOFF CONTEST<\/b><\/a>
\neach Presidential election year by posting a favorite cookie recipe for
\neach wife of the candidates. This year Laura put up a Oatmeal Chocolate
\nChunk Cookie and Theresa put up a Pumpkin Spice Cookie. Visitors to the
\nwebsite are encouraged to make the cookies and then vote for their
\nfavorite. The contest started in June and in November the winner will
\nbe announced. Last month the word came out that the Pumpkin Spice
\nCookies were terrible. And when asked about it, Theresa said it wasn’t
\nreally “her” recipe, someone on her staff picked it for her and she
\ndoesn’t like Pumpkin Spice.<\/p>\n

So if Theresa doesn’t like pumpkin in the first place, why would
\nsomeone pick out a pumpkin cookie for a nation-wide contest? Hummmmm…<\/p>\n

Second, if you saw the film footage of Kerry at that Wendy’s the
\nother day, the one where he approached the Marines, you might have seen Theresa pointing up to a menu<\/b><\/a> of food items on the wall by the order desk. Theresa pointed to the Wendy’s Chili and asked the clerk what it was?<\/p>\n

Yep, those two truly represent the middle class in this country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My response is this:  <\/p>\n

If we can’t laugh at the foibles of both major candidates (to say
\nnothing of the third party guys), then we’re pretty poorly off. They’re
\nhilarious as they trip over themselves to show us how __<\/em>__ (fill in the blank) they are.<\/p>\n

Especially since both of these guys and their families are
\nplutocrats. Neither of them is “in touch” with the middle class,
\nbecause they’ve never been middle class in either of their lives. At
\ntheir worst, they might have been upper<\/i> middle class. Both of
\n‘em are worth hundreds of millions. John Kerry can’t fake being
\nmiddle class to save his life, and George Bush’s affect of “middle
\nclass” is only that — an affect and a pretty poor one at that.  My
\nGod, they’re both Skull and Bones at Yale.  It’s hard to be more a
\nmember of the overclass elite than that.<\/p>\n

And I really doubt that Laura Bush spends much time baking her own
\ncookies or that the recipe was really hers at all. (Besides, didn’t we
\ndo this cookie thing last time with Bush v. Clinton?) I’ve spent too
\nmuch time in politics to believe that for more than about two seconds.
\nAnd Teresa may not know what chili is — but I bet her Portuguese
\nfood is great. So what? <\/p>\n

The question for both Laura and Teresa isn’t about food, what they
\nlike or don’t, what they know or don’t. It’s about whether their
\nhusbands can govern effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I post over at Command Post every little while.  For those of you who don’t know what the site is, it’s a place where contributors can put up news items of interests in the vital questions of the day. So I posted the bike story from below earlier today over there, and the responses were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-ol","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}