Populist Mustard

I'm in California at my parents' house this week. They're both lifelong Orange County Republicans, McCain voters, and predisposed to dislike Obama, and when I played the "what kind of a man eats ketchup" audio for them, they couldn't understand it. When I told them that the same criticism is making the rounds among certain conservative commentators, they were incredulous and then indignant.

A lot of folks unused to being accused of having effete tastes were thinking to themselves, "Hey, wait a minute... mustard? I like mustard."

It's bad enough to use rhetoric that narrows your appeal to older white folks who live in small towns or suburbs. Now they're managing to make the tent so small that only white non-urban folks who hate mustard pass the culture cue test.