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Canoodling with Clinton, Obama Courts the Cosi Commuters

September 11th, 2008
By GREG PIPER

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Barack Obama tried to patch things up with the predominant Democratic dynasty today, lunching with Bill Clinton near his Harlem office before going to his joint appearance with John McCain at ground zero. If the food was any guide of Obama’s future as a candidate and president, the mushy middle is where he’s headed.

The lunch menu, according to the campaign, was a choice of sandwiches and flatbread pizza from Cosi, plus salad. Beverages were not specified.

For those unfamiliar with the chain, Cosi is about as safe and bland as you get for a lunch spot in metropolitan centers. The sandwiches have exotic-sounding names but very little flavor, and the flatbread is so flimsy as to be useless in holding together the sandwich. I dare you to watch someone at Cosi try to eat a sandwich without it falling apart. It’s like watching a gazelle get run down by a lioness - you feel sorry for the poor creature as it falls from grace. The pizza comes from a giant hearth but it’s nothing special either. Salads come in a novel, acorn-shaped lidded plastic container that employees shake up to mix around everything, and may be the best thing about the chain. But they’ll run you $10 for some lettuce, kalamata olives and feta. You won’t be disappointed if you’re a lover of bland venti lattes as well.

Why do I think this is relevant to the Obama campaign? It’s Harlem, for one thing. There are certainly more exciting, culturally-rich dining establishments there, and Bill Clinton must surely know where they are. Obama is in a position of strength, given his post-convention popularity and the reaction to the Clintons’ snippiness over the past few months. You would think his choice for lunch would rule. But maybe that really was Obama’s choice - because the press was there.

Cosi is emblematic of middle-class bourgeois life: decorative, comfortable and utterly meaningless. It’s the destination for people with no strong feelings about food but a strong aversion to risk in eating. Those are exactly the people Obama is trying to win over now - not so much the country people who cling to guns and religion, who are naturally colorful and memorable, who cook with lard, and who aren’t going to vote for him anyway. It’s the folks in the suburbs who commute into the south Dupont Circle area near my office and just want something familiar for half an hour in the middle of the day. It doesn’t have to be exciting, or memorable, or worthy of foodblogging. It doesn’t have to inspire.

Maybe Barack and Bill just wanted a simple lunch with no surprises. But I think it’s a thinly-veiled message to the mushy voters of America who still haven’t made up their minds. The Cosi Commuters are ripe for the taking. And to fit in, Obama must let his sandwich of hope fall apart.



This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Bill Clinton, Popular Culture, Newsweek Blogitics, Food, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Society, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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