Keller @ Large: Politics Of Food Faux Pas
BOSTON (CBS) - "We're going to do well in New York" in the April 19th GOP primary, says John Kasich, despite the ribbing he's taking from his food faux pas in Queens the other day.
TV crews shooting Kasich's lunch with local officials caught him digging into a slice of New York-style pizza -- with a knife and fork. Oh, the sauceanity.
Kasich laughed about it later, and chances are he'll suffer less public wrath than Mayor Bill deBlasio - an alleged New Yorker with Italian heritage - did when he was spotted carving up his pizza only two weeks into the job. "In my ancestral homeland it is more typical to eat with a fork and knife," deBlasio tried to explain.
Unpersuasive, but not as lame as Mitt Romney's pandering to a Mississippi crowd during a 2012 campaign stop. "I started out this morning with a biscuit and some cheesy grits," he gushed, an apparent reference to a local favorite -- "cheese grits."
Does any of this really matter? "No matter where you go in the world its expected that you have brushed up on the customs," says Roseanne Thomas of Boston's Protocol Advisors Inc., an expert manners and protocol counselor. She says proper food etiquette is a crucial skill for politicians courting the locals.
"Food is such a big part of culture, a part of history, a part of families," she says. "They want to know for sure that you know who they are and appreciate who they are and what they eat."
When Bill Clinton campaigned in Philadelphia in 1996, he knew you have to order your Philly cheesesteak with provolone or Cheez Whiz on it. But in 2004, John Kerry ordered Swiss cheese, and nearly wound up losing Pennsylvania in the election as a result.
Yes, food matters. As Thomas puts it: "If you're up here in Boston and you order Manhattan clam chowder, you're going to be in trouble."