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100 Cans of Soup
Apr. 15th, 2016 07:27 pmWhen I scanned the news headlines this morning, I saw something about Ted Cruz having bought 100 cans of soup. Why is this even a story I wondered, before turning my mind to the important matter of whether it was too early for breakfast.
This afternoon, this Tumblr post crossed my dashboard, and I realised that there were lots of people out there who didn't understand why this was a non-story – a hundred cans of Campbell's has some sort of inbuilt fascination, as Andy Warhol discovered, and it was a funny story, and we apparently needed some way to caricature Ted Cruz because Donald Trump sucks up all the available satire in the room. I am no fan of Cruz, but it bugged me that Tumblr, international HQ of outsiders aggrieved that no one makes the effort to understand people unlike themselves, should be pointing and laughing like this, so I wrote something. I don't expect its presence here to make any difference, but I know I'll lose it forever if it only stays on Tumblr, so here it is crossposted with very minor rewrites (I can't help picking at things).
Dear Internet,
I know you like a story about The Crazy, and doing down politicians you don’t like, but I think a lot of you are missing what might be important cultural context here.
Ted Cruz is Penetcostal (on the Evangelical fringe of the Evangelical Christians) and from Texas (if we’ve all agreed to forget that he was born in Canada). He is not Mormon from Utah, yet there is enough cultural crossover between right-wing Christian sects in the Western US that some of my experience living amongst Utah Mormons in Middle America might help make this story comprehensible.
In Mormonism, and in Utah especially, you’re strongly encouraged to have a large stock of food and survival supplies on hand because, as we all know, the End Times will shortly be upon us, and you will need to keep your large family fed and secure while the world outside your house falls to pieces.
It is also a fact that an inordinate number of recipes common to middle-class Utah Mormon families start with a can of Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup.
As the Mormon expectation of an imminent Armageddon is shared by many other Evangelical Christian groups, and the suburban middle class in Utah shares many other characteristics with analogous populations throughout the West – not least the delight in loading one’s enormous vehicle with several months’ worth of supplies bought at wholesale distributors like Costco, which is considered completely normal behaviour – it is not in the least bit surprising that a newly married man should embark upon his new life by supplying the family home with a large quantity of a staple foodstuff. The story doesn’t specify the soup, but in spite of an aversion to gambling I’d happily put $10 on it having been Condensed Cream of Mushroom.
To be clear, I don’t like Ted Cruz. I don’t like his policies, I don’t like his rhetoric, I don’t like his style, and the little I’ve seen of him, this far away and without a television, rings all my bells for ‘phony.’ While it rankles to step into the shoes of a Cruz apologist, there’s a more important motivation here than politics: A lack of understanding of the other side – a lack of trying to understand the other side, or indeed even wanting to – is what has made the current political and cultural situation in the States so vitriolic and hazardous, and it’s a phenomenon that, having become standard on the internet, is spreading. 100 cans of soup may be inherently funny, but pointing and laughing is just deepening the divide that is causing so many problems. If you want others to understand your group and not point and laugh unthinkingly, then don’t do that yourself. Golden rule, Humanity 101.
This afternoon, this Tumblr post crossed my dashboard, and I realised that there were lots of people out there who didn't understand why this was a non-story – a hundred cans of Campbell's has some sort of inbuilt fascination, as Andy Warhol discovered, and it was a funny story, and we apparently needed some way to caricature Ted Cruz because Donald Trump sucks up all the available satire in the room. I am no fan of Cruz, but it bugged me that Tumblr, international HQ of outsiders aggrieved that no one makes the effort to understand people unlike themselves, should be pointing and laughing like this, so I wrote something. I don't expect its presence here to make any difference, but I know I'll lose it forever if it only stays on Tumblr, so here it is crossposted with very minor rewrites (I can't help picking at things).
Dear Internet,
I know you like a story about The Crazy, and doing down politicians you don’t like, but I think a lot of you are missing what might be important cultural context here.
Ted Cruz is Penetcostal (on the Evangelical fringe of the Evangelical Christians) and from Texas (if we’ve all agreed to forget that he was born in Canada). He is not Mormon from Utah, yet there is enough cultural crossover between right-wing Christian sects in the Western US that some of my experience living amongst Utah Mormons in Middle America might help make this story comprehensible.
In Mormonism, and in Utah especially, you’re strongly encouraged to have a large stock of food and survival supplies on hand because, as we all know, the End Times will shortly be upon us, and you will need to keep your large family fed and secure while the world outside your house falls to pieces.
It is also a fact that an inordinate number of recipes common to middle-class Utah Mormon families start with a can of Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup.
As the Mormon expectation of an imminent Armageddon is shared by many other Evangelical Christian groups, and the suburban middle class in Utah shares many other characteristics with analogous populations throughout the West – not least the delight in loading one’s enormous vehicle with several months’ worth of supplies bought at wholesale distributors like Costco, which is considered completely normal behaviour – it is not in the least bit surprising that a newly married man should embark upon his new life by supplying the family home with a large quantity of a staple foodstuff. The story doesn’t specify the soup, but in spite of an aversion to gambling I’d happily put $10 on it having been Condensed Cream of Mushroom.
To be clear, I don’t like Ted Cruz. I don’t like his policies, I don’t like his rhetoric, I don’t like his style, and the little I’ve seen of him, this far away and without a television, rings all my bells for ‘phony.’ While it rankles to step into the shoes of a Cruz apologist, there’s a more important motivation here than politics: A lack of understanding of the other side – a lack of trying to understand the other side, or indeed even wanting to – is what has made the current political and cultural situation in the States so vitriolic and hazardous, and it’s a phenomenon that, having become standard on the internet, is spreading. 100 cans of soup may be inherently funny, but pointing and laughing is just deepening the divide that is causing so many problems. If you want others to understand your group and not point and laugh unthinkingly, then don’t do that yourself. Golden rule, Humanity 101.
