SlowpokeBlog

This week's cartoon was inspired by a recent article in the C-VILLE Weekly (which runs Slowpoke and currently hosts this website) about locally-grown, organic produce. Entitled "The $5 tomato: How upscale produce, a status symbol for the new foodies, is saving local farms", the article borrowed heavily from right-wing pundit David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise, suggesting that the market for organic food was driven largely by status-conscious "bobos" -- bourgeois bohemians -- who are prone to spending $15,000 on slate shower stalls and, yes, $5 on a perfect tomato. Here's an excerpt:

On the grocery shopping habits of Bobos, Brooks writes, “When the shoppers push a cart through the entrance, they are standing in an epicenter of the Upscale Suburban Hippiedom…The visitor to Fresh Fields [Whole Foods by another name] is confronted with a big sign that says ‘Organic Items Today: 130.’ This is like a barometer of virtue.”

The tomato, selected for its quality and taste, is also chosen for its purity, as well as the status it suggests for its consumer...

Among those who derive their identity from their food choices, Ann Haskell is a standout example. Leader of the Virginia Old Dominion Slow Food convivium, an organization dedicated to cooking from scratch with in-season, local produce, she comes from a long line of Virginia gardeners. Haskell, who lives in Charlottesville, is increasingly concerned about food’s political implications, she explained via e-mail: “Because of its treatment of employees, we do not buy anything at Sam’s Club (or any Wal-Mart stores) or from other markets that have been identified…as unfair to labor. And we try not to buy products whose shipping entails great fuel expenditure.”

Clearly, it’s not just about eating vegetarian anymore. The foodie identity is wrapped up in many things—politics, the environment, health, purity, taste and status.

I doubt Haskell's awareness of the politics of food, and her conscientious shopping habits, are motivated by a sense of "identity" or "status." She sounds like an informed person trying to do the right thing. AND she's practicing Slowpokedom! I am tempted to join the Slow Food convivium myself.

I have to say, I was disheartened to see David Brooks' pompous pseudo-sociology infiltrating the pages of my beloved hometown altweekly. It's not that I can't take a joke -- I often make fun of new-agey/lefty marketing clichés in my cartoons (see the Buddha Brand tea and Rowdy Lesbian cupcakes in "Santa Claus or Beyoncé?"). But this idea of "bobos" must be placed in a larger context. Statistically-speaking, the higher one's income, the more likely one is to vote Republican. David Brooks' book is subtitled The New Upper Class and How they Got There. Except the upper class in America ain't a bunch of rich hippies. You'll recall the famous Bush quote, "This is an impressive crowd -- the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite -- I call you my base." A rare moment of honesty!

But a major cornerstone of Republican strategy is to convince Americans that progressives are the true elites to be despised. And so we hear over and over again about "latte-sipping liberals" and "limousine liberals" and the all-powerful "liberal elite." Many progressives swallow this narrative themselves, reproducing the right-wing frame. I call this participating in your own disempowerment, and it was a theme running through a presentation I gave last week at the Center for American Progress in DC. It's how the right divides Americans now, and half the time, progressives are doing the work for them. We're prone to mocking our own; it shows how independent-minded we are, and it gives us street cred.

Certainly there are extreme cases worthy of satire; but I don't know anyone with a slate shower stall. Yes, there are yuppies. But are they overwhelmingly progressive? I don't think so. The bobo stereotype fits so perfectly into Republican rhetoric, it's almost like it was hatched in a think tank. And who knows, maybe it was.

I hate to criticize my fave progressive rag, but I feel this issue is of tremendous importance.