The Breakfast Factor

Maureen Dowd peers into the mind of Barack Obama and discerns his taste in breakfast:

In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.

But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.

Haha, after all everyone "knows" Obama is the wine track candidate in this race so he must hate waffles and only eat egg whites. Back in the real world, though, Obama's state senate district was a mixed-race, mixed-income urban neighborhood (it's no Chappaqua) not unlike the one I live in. And not to overgeneralize, but the U Street area features plenty of heavy breakfast joints (see Florida Avenue Grill above) and spots like Ben's Chili Bowl and you wouldn't make it very far in local politics in a place like that if you were really so averse to unhealthy eats.

But since the wine/beer narrative has some explanatory force in the 2008 primary, we must now allow it to dominate our characterizations of everything -- never mind the facts or the complicating factors of actual biography, race, etc.

Photo by Flickr user Intangible Arts used under a Creative Commons license