We are a nutritionally starved body politic, and there is perhaps no more conclusive evidence of this fact than Kamala Harris’s campaign to win voters over with her ostensible affection for food.
While offering next to no substance to the public regarding her policies — only now, a month and a half after mugging Biden of his lunch money and nomination, updating her campaign site to vaguely assemble policy aims — Harris is trying her hand at an Anthony Bourdain food-travel show that makes up for its host’s lack of charm by also being even more self-deconstructive than its inspiration.
Since she’s become the nominee, Republicans have criticized Harris for not doing many interviews or giving enough specifics on her policy plans.
But the vice president is sharing personal details about her childhood, cooking and food to show her more private side.
It is known that Harris is a foodie and likes to cook. In fact, she had just made a pancakes-and-bacon breakfast for her niece’s 6- and 8-year-old daughters on the July morning when Biden called with the news that he was dropping out of the race.
From talking about nacho cheese Doritos as her snack of choice to washing collard greens in the bathtub, Harris is aiming to connect with voters on a more personal level. While learning that she likes to munch tortilla chips at snack time likely isn’t enough on its own to sway anyone to vote for her, the small — and sometimes amusing — details could help Harris show she can relate to people and their concerns.
I want to say this tactic won’t work because I dislike what it suggests about American citizenry, but it may be that drawing even with Trump — who eats the people’s food, McDonald’s, and drinks the people’s soda, Coke — will be enough to make the media’s Cooking with Kamala pilot worth the Dyonesian nisus.
After all, Americans love food.
We worship it. We blog about it. Capture it for Instagram. “Phone eats first,” some joke to each other while turning diner booths into photo booths. We spend our non-dining time watching other people eat — YouTube, cable, and TikTok would be shadows of themselves if not for food content. Our most popular shows and entertainers, from Rhett and Link’s food rankings and Shawn Evans’s Hot Ones interviews conducted at pub tables while mowing through increasingly inflammatory buffalo wings (which garner more views than late-night staples) to Conan Without Borders and Oprah, confirm our fascination with secondhand mastication.
International travel is, according to Americans, an opportunity to eat marginally different food in a novel location. Cruises and all-inclusives market to that instinct with unlimited buffets and room service. So a politician coming along and saying she, too, enjoys (very specific and well-received) food should not be surprising, especially if discussing grub can distract from a deficit elsewhere.
Herein lies the rub (mostly chicken, we come to find out). There’s no issue with a well-rounded candidate telling the well-rounded American people about her favorite dishes. But when that look into her kitchen interrupts or aborts the necessary questions of what, if anything, the candidate believes, it’s a shameless ruse and should be called what it is: offal.