Customs, Etiquette and Manners

I never thought I would relate to Ron DeSantis, a man whose political beliefs I vehemently oppose. But a few weeks ago, when I read this report about the Florida governor’s eating habits, I felt a deep sense of somewhat shameful recognition.“He would sit in meetings and eat in front of people,” an unnamed former DeSantis staffer told The Daily Beast, “always like a starving animal who has never eaten before.”This is me. I don’t eat my food; I inhale it.Actually, this is my entire family. I sometimes joke that my husband and I got married because we both eat so quickly and aggressively. Dinner at our house rarely lasts more than 10 minutes. When I eat in public, I have to consciously try to slow down — and I hate that.Where DeSantis lost me, though, is in the one detail about his manners that went viral. Per The Daily Beast:Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., in March of 2019, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert — by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.It’s an image so specific — scooping pudding with not one, not two, but three fingers — that I can’t erase it from my mind. It’s so indelible that it ricocheted around the internet: Talking Points Memo called it “PuddingGate.” In an interview covering DeSantis’s possible run for president, Piers Morgan asked the governor if he’d really eaten pudding with three fingers. “I don’t remember ever doing that,” DeSantis hedged. “Maybe when I was a kid.”PuddingGate reminded me of a similar uproar in 2019, after The Times published an anecdote about Senator Amy Klobuchar, at the time a presidential contender, eating salad with a comb, another surprising and unforgettable moment in the annals of political dining. Then memories of other politicians-and-food stories came flooding back to me: Why do I remember that Barack Obama’s White House chef joked that Obama ate exactly seven almonds as a snack? (An allegation Obama was moved to debunk.) And why is any of my precious brain space, what little is left of it, occupied by a 2016 report that Donald Trump prefers his steak so well done “it would rock on the plate”? (In 2017, The Takeout asked if Trump dunking a $54 steak in ketchup was “a crime” — though not one he was recently charged with.)“I think in our minds, what and how people eat tells us a lot about who they are,” said Priya Fielding-Singh, a sociologist and an assistant professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah, and the author of “How the Other Half Eats.” The public believes that a person’s eating habits tell us something unique and authentic about them, she said, “something that we can’t learn through their political speeches or policy endorsements. It gives us this window into their character, their values, their willpower, self-discipline, virtuousness, laziness.”Our interest in politicians’ eating habits isn’t new, either. According to Harold Holzer, the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College and the author of “The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media — From the Founding Fathers to Fake News,” Americans have been turning a spotlight on the diets of presidents at least since Thomas Jefferson served ice cream at the White House. “People were amazed at what he was eating,” Holzer said.Holzer, who has studied Abraham Lincoln most extensively, said Lincoln didn’t have much of an appetite, “but when he was hungry, he would take out a pen knife and core an apple,” cutting off chunks and eating them, which some people apparently found odd.Perhaps these stories are able to take hold because they correspond with our perceptions of each of these men — Jefferson as the well-traveled aristocrat, bringing a delicacy to greater recognition in the States, and Lincoln as more of a common man, less concerned with appearances. Remember the hubbub when Obama bemoaned the price of arugula during his first presidential run? People glommed onto that detail because it fit with the claims that he was too elitist to appeal to regular, vegetable-hating Americans. (Good thing he didn’t call the bitter green “rocket” or he might not have made it out of the primaries.)As Holzer notes, part of any presidential campaign — any high-profile campaign, really — involves traveling around and eating local delicacies in the correct way: Lord help you if you eat pizza with a knife and fork. Heaven forfend if you order lox, capers and onions on a cinnamon-raisin bagel, Cynthia Nixon’s “troubling” selection during New York’s 2018 gubernatorial race that prompted commentator George Conway to tweet “Lox her up?”Writing for The Atlantic in 2018, the food anthropologist Kelly Alexander called this “gastropolitics”:Since the advent of American democracy, politicians have deployed foods in order to show how populist they are — how much they are like you and me. They attend barbecues in the South (and in Arizona) and corn festivals in the Midwest; they visit citrus growers in Florida, Mexican restaurants in California, and fishermen in Maine and Massachusetts, all while eating whatever the local specialty is in front of as many people and as much press as possible.But there’s a difference between information about eating habits that politicians control or release themselves (for example, Canada’s Green Party leader giving President Biden a “Peace by Chocolate” bar from a company founded by Syrian immigrants) and the often unflattering details that leak, sometimes from anonymous former staffers who seem to have an ax to grind. The latter tend to make more headlines because we may think that the way someone eats in private is more representative of their true self.Which brings me back to DeSantis. I don’t share the view of New York magazine’s Margaret Hartmann, who entertained the possibility that eating pudding with three fingers is “so weird it may end his 2024 presidential bid before it officially starts.” If you’re a fan of the governor, I doubt you’d be moved to vote against him because his hunger overcame his sense of good manners. Though he’s dipping in the national polls against Trump, he beat Trump among regular Florida Republican primary voters in one new poll, and his approval rating is higher in his home state than it was in September. The brand he’s trying to create is that of a regular (you know, Yale-and-Harvard-educated regular) guy who’s battling “elites” on every front. As an unfazed DeSantis said to Morgan: “They’re talking about pudding? Like, is that really the best you’ve got? OK, bring it on.”One sure takeaway, though? If you’re ever running for office, keep spare utensils handy at all times.Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My oldest daughter is 19 and in her second year of university. The tiny victories are just as sweet, even though she no longer needs me to wipe her face. As this semester began, she was juggling two part time jobs as well as full time study. I urged her to reduce her waitressing shifts the same week that lectures started. She was sure that she’d be fine to keep working at the restaurant at the same pace for a couple of weeks. Turns out, it was too much. Oh, my friends, how sweet it is to receive a text message that begins “Mum! You were right.”— Miriam McCaleb, North Canterbury, New ZealandIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. 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