"croissant-munching, latte-sipping": instances of misconceived media-class self-loathing ITT

i didn't think the bacon sandwich photo was supposed to be showing ed's disdain for the common man's carcinogenic meat, i assumed it was bullying more in the vein of "lol look at this man's face he cannot rule us"

It was that as well.

I just thought "I bet there's an Orwell quote about this" and about ten seconds of Googling revealed this:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right — the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity

"Fruit juice drinker"

you can put pretty much any banal activity into a format that makes it seem like something worthy of hatred, if you try hard enough.

i dunno what bruschetta is, i guess i have to work harder at being the liberal elite i strive to be

ok for me the miliband sandwich issue has just sedimented out into several rival issues:

i: Ed is posh and this loathed the decent working man's food which showed on his face as he forced himself to eat it
ii: Ed is vegetarian and cannot abide meat like an Orwell-loathed crank which showed on his face as he forced himself to eat it
iii: Ed is Jewish and cannot abide bacon like some kind of muslim which showed on his face as he forced himself to eat it
iv: Ed looks weird when he puts food in his mouth and chews

I had always gone for (iv): this has been an education in the layered subtleties of media-class self-loathing

i feel like it was definitely iv, in its entirety. i'm dubious about it being any other.

i didn't even know it was a bacon sandwich

you can put pretty much any banal activity into a format that makes it seem like something worthy of hatred, if you try hard enough.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Tuesday, November 29, 2016 1:02 PM (five minutes ago)

"mouth-breather"

brexiteers and jam (aka "comedy marmalade") derives from the fact that jam is one of only a small number of popular foodstuffs that we don't need to import* to turn into a valued commodity that will bring the world's markets a-running

*however, as noted on the brexit thread: "UK farmers warn of Brexit-triggered labour crisis" = fruit and veg rotting in the fields unpicked
https://www.ft.com/content/7ceb876c-b58d-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d

bcz the usual labourforce have noted (a) their pay packed will have dropped in value by c.20%, and (b) England is no longer a friendly place to come and do cheap useful seasonal labour in

can we pause to investigate whether or not in the very raising of this thread attacking tropes attacking tropes mark s is himself an example of a trope

i am obv in asking this performing a recognise trope attacking service and hiding behind any such accusation is not to be countenanced

Also, I recall the fact that it was a bacon sandwich being made a very big deal of at the time - bacon butty, sandwich of the people, Ed cannot eat it look at him look at him.

So basically I read it as mostly iv but with a reasonable dose of i and a tiny bit of iii for those who are looking for it.

can we pause to investigate whether or not having smelt it deems himself may have dealt it

iirc Orwell took shots at fruit juice on a number of other occasions also. really had a problem with the stuff

ah weird i never noticed the bacon part - i prob only came across this "story" via people's outrage about it on twitter so i missed whatever the tabloid's "point" was besides the photo.

i had scrambled egg today and did not in any sense munch it

Miliband was otherised by the right wing press and some members of his own party for quite some time - "he looks weird", "he's a North London intellectual", "his father hated Britain", he was compared to the Child Catcher (an actual antisemitic caricature) by some dreadful Katie Hopkins-alike. The bacon sandwich can't be separated from all that.

Yeah the sandwich being bacon-filled was mentioned too often for it not to be just 'face even weirder when eating'.

yeah i don't dispute that - i never read the actual content around the sandwich, as i say, like many things, i probably wouldn't have heard about it if it wasn't for people who were annoyed about it sharing it on twitter.

tbf to the tabloids and the fascists generally, if he had followed my mum's much-repeated rules on eating he would not have come to grief in this instance

a: "that bite was much to big! take smaller mouthfuls!"
b: "keep your mouth closed when you're chewing!"

If you have really poor quality bacon it can be difficult to take a clean bite no matter how small a bite you take.

theresa may eats only the finest british bacon, made from churchillian pigs.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was munching which”

On the food theme, isn't there some alleged account of Peter Mandelson mistaking mushy peas for guacamole at a chippie in his constituency?

"Typical Guardian reader" is often thrown around as a pejorative term by peopel who I'm sure also read it.

I love George Orwell, but I don't think that notorious passage does him much credit. Rereading it now, I am coming to think it is as bad as all the people who say it is bad have always thought.

sometimes guacamole IS MADE WITH PEAS

Mandelson/guac story has also been attributed to Caprice and is presumably apocryphal

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A political committee set up by Florida Gov. Rick Scott is criticizing the woman who shouted at him in a coffee shop and blasted his support of an anti-abortion law, saying she's a "latte liberal."

Video of the confrontation has been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube and shows 39-year-old Cara Jennings calling the governor "an embarrassment to our state." She tells him her health care costs had increased because of his policies.

Scott replied that he has created 1 million jobs, before turning around and leaving the Starbucks before getting his coffee.

xp was just coming to post about The Prince of Darkness and that apocryphal story about Hartlepool guacamole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRx8-Hjlk0

guacamole for Mandelson performed the same function as Bacon Sandwich-gate did for EMili: a chance to have a good sneer effete, out of touch, chattering class Hampstead liberals for other effete, out of touch Hampstead liberals AKA the gentlemen of the press

brexiteers and jam

Jam also probably symbolises the battle against liberal PC do-gooders who won't let them have a golliwog on the jar any more, which must be the fault of the EU. Racist jam will make Britain great again.

"moet medics"
^^^this seems a reach

"chardonnay-swilling"
^^^this seems to have undergone the social drift that croissant hasn't -- viz it used to mean the same as "champagne socialist" (and still does in eg australia?) but e.g. on mumsnet now means something a bit more TOWIE or WAG-ish

great thread:

https://twitter.com/WeWantPlates🔗

people who go to shit restaurants complaining about their choice by criticising the perceived pretentiousness of the crap restaurants they CHOOSE TO GO TO, as if they've dipped their toe into a dimension that disgusts them, rather than being the only ones living in that dimension.

But but but this is a disease and it is spreading! You go to a place for years and then one day they bring out your burger on a fucking board! Betrayal.

Mandleson's guacamole faux pas is indeed apocryphal, according to Peter Bazalgette; I hadn't realised that Kinnock was involved in popularising the misconception

So, before I report on a tasting of guacamole, I have to deal with an urban myth: that the politician Peter Mandelson, visiting a northern chippie, asked for “some of that guacamole” when referring to the mushy peas. I have investigated this thoroughly and it turns out the real culprit was a young American intern. This was compounded when former Labour leader Neil Kinnock unkindly attributed the remark to m’lord Mandelson. That sorts that.

https://www.ft.com/content/7dea4d8e-6c6d-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a

It's true about chardonnay. The last time I heard it mentioned was someone saying 'book clubs that get together and drink chardonnay'. What could be so wrong about that? (The implication was that it was a bit 'common' or something)

(Compare ILB club that gets together over Harvey's)

the culinary synecdoche

we call em frogs, they call us rosbifs

wikipeida is telling me that the Irish equivalent of champagne socialist/chardonnay socialist/gauche caviar etc is "smoked salmon socialist", can anyone confirm if this is true

"lambrini-swilling"

as in "labrini-swilling social hooligans"

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-09-06/new-bbc-comedy-motherland-has-the-realities-of-the-school-run-down-to-a-tee
You may think that middle-class mums (and dads) are everywhere – in life, in popular culture, blimey you may even be one yourself. But us quinoa-munching stalwarts of the school run haven’t had a sitcom of our own yet.

further to my point abt my mum's opinions upthread, if ppl didn't "munch" or swill" but ate and drank nicely perhaps all this bigotry would vanish?

quaffing is also bad

starfish and coffee, brexiteers and jam

GQ UK went to that shop and reported that dry, crusty bread was to blame, declared the sandwich "difficult."

I'm reminded of John Kerry's unforced error in requesting actual cheese on his Philly cheesesteak order instead of cheez whiz, as Real American Dubya did.

Just searching "munching liberals" gets you:

lentil-munching
granola-munching
quinoa-munching
muesli-munching
cock-munching (this is probably not about food)
arugula-munching (this is something of a curveball)
tofu-munching
Guardian-munching (possibly a typo)
kale-munching
croissant-munching (FINALLY!)
lettuce-munching
salad-munching
mashed yeast-munching (WTF?)
vegetable-munching (this is just lazy)
bean-munching (not even mung beans at that)

I gave up after page five.

you missed yoghurt weaving

lentil-munching
granola-munching
quinoa-munching
muesli-munching
cock-munching (this is probably not about food)
arugula-munching (this is something of a curveball)
tofu-munching
Guardian-munching (possibly a typo)
kale-munching
croissant-munching (FINALLY!)
lettuce-munching
salad-munching
mashed yeast-munching (WTF?)
vegetable-munching (this is just lazy)
bean-munching (not even mung beans at that)

is this from "Cheeseburger in Paradise"?

The general difference between liberal elite self-loathing and actual right-wingers seems to be that the latter are just disgusted at the concept of anyone eating a vegetable.

well, I used to be a rough-hewn construction industry professional and the only tea I will drink is masala chai with a petit bourgie sprinkling of sweet cinnamon and a very posh dash of honey.

true builders tea must be drank from a hard hat

or out of their own arsehole!

Talk about a tea strainer

I often used to be stumped when someone is doing a job in my flat and I would only have mint or rooibos tea or whatever. Once I gave some fairly reluctant builder rooibos and he seemed to really enthusiastically like it. These days I think I still have whatever normal tea my parents bought last time they visited.

when I had BT broadband installation guy round he said he'd have a coffee, but no additional impurities like sugar or artificial sweeteners he requested. He said he was participating in a body-building competition and was on a strict diet.

These days who fucking knows, they're probably on all sorts of diets. It just adds to the class anxiety and confusion, "oh you assumed I want tea and biscuits but no"

Got to admit though, when there's been builders and contractors in at my work you wouldn't believe what they put away at breakfast. Massive fried breakfasts with everything on the plate AND cereal or porridge AND toast. Basically everything on the menu.

The lad who does my boiler is very old school Cockney, goes for a bacon roll without fail mid-morning, one morning he brought me one impromptu so he's obviously making good cash, smokes constantly, I'm not the healthiest man alive but you'd seriously worry for his ticker. Nice bloke tho.

I always say I’m making one very strong Yorkshire Tea for myself and don’t do solo missions* wrt tea prep.

*in an early shared house where my flatmates were mainly wc South London guys in a band my friend managed, the ‘solo mission’ was going to make tea without offering same to anyone else at home, and thou shalt not solo was the 11th commandment.

I remember being at a grotty cafe in rough as f Crosland Moor in Hudds. And this was in the mid to late 90's when lots of groundwork contracts were flying because NTL were laying cable everywhere. I used to see these Irish digging crew guys readying themselves for a day of hard graft in the rain by having a full Sunday roast beef dinner with Yorkshire puds and gravy at 8am!

Got to admit though, when there's been builders and contractors in at my work you wouldn't believe what they put away at breakfast. Massive fried breakfasts with everything on the plate AND cereal or porridge AND toast. Basically everything on the menu.

In my early twenties I worked in an auto parts warehouse, loading and unloading trucks of brake pads and rotors, exhaust pipes and mufflers. I used to start every day with a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew.

The schedules are crazy. I remember working 6am shifts at Radio One years ago and your lunch is at like half nine or 10am or whatever. The culture of the fryup for lunch was a part of that life for me and my colleagues but it's mostly builders sharing the greasy spoon with you.

xpost

Got to admit though, when there's been builders and contractors in at my work you wouldn't believe what they put away at breakfast. Massive fried breakfasts with everything on the plate AND cereal or porridge AND toast. Basically everything on the menu.

Remember my surprise when other half was talking about his family in Trinidad traditionally would eat hearty breakfasts of curry, rice etc for breakfast but ofc the context was that they were working people and needed energy to go out and cut sugar cane in the fields all day. Modern equivalent, closest I’ve experienced was miso soup, rice and fish for breakfast in Tokyo which was smaller portions but again makes a lot of sense for shoring someone up for a long commute and longer working day, and is obviously nutritionally balanced. Makes total sense in that context.

'builders? john... builders for you? builders simon?"

this honestly just gave me a panic attack

in mexico it seems the tradition is a big breakfast - beans, salsa, tortillas, eggs - and then a big lunch/dinner at like 3pm, and then either nothing for dinner or just a snack or something light. "supper" i guess. i kind of like it!

this honestly just gave me a panic attack

lol