After I submitted my ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ column for Monday’s Daily Post, our editor forwarded me a link to a more-or-less related video.
In my Monday column, I had expressed my frustration with the unidentified party (or parties) who established November as “National Spinach and Squash Month” and I confessed to my childhood struggles with overcooked vegetables in general.
The video concerned a similar struggle… but in this case, the hatred — not of spinach and squash — but rather, hatred of another particular vegetable.
Broccoli.
Apparently, the 41st President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, did not like broccoli, and famously told the nation about his dislike.
On more than one occasion.
I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid. And my mother made me eat it. Now I’m President of the United States. And I’m not gonna eat any more broccoli!
Eric Ostermeier, a researcher at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, recorded seventy instances where Bush had mentioned his hatred of the vegetable during his presidency.
In response to the President’s repeated attacks on the vegetable, the broccoli growers of California, who annually produce about 90 percent of America’s broccoli, pledged to send several trucks of the vegetable to the White House. George Dunlop, the president of the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, gave First Lady Barbara Bush a bouquet of broccoli and an additional 10-tons of the vegetable, delivered in trucks.
Apparently as a result of Bush’s comments, broccoli saw an increase in popularity, with sales increasing by 10 percent. A supermarket sales director told the Los Angeles Times that “Broccoli has never enjoyed so much publicity”.
Among Democrats, especially, I would assume.
Campbell Soup Company and Woman’s Day magazine organized a recipe contest titled: “How to Get President Bush to Eat Broccoli”. The winner received $7,500.
When asked about the possible effect of Bush’s hateful comments on impressionable children, the First Lady replied: “He ate broccoli until he was 60. Tell them [the children] to eat it until they are 60.”
I will probably never become President of the United States. You never know how the future will unfold, but it’s definitely a long shot. But I want to share my own personal experience with broccoli. For what it’s worth.
My world was utterly changed during a neighborhood BBQ, when someone set out a tray of raw vegetables. I must have been about five years old at the time, and I was shocked to see raw broccoli and raw cauliflower nestled next to raw carrot slices and raw celery sticks. I had been exposed previously to raw celery sticks — who hasn’t? — but raw broccoli flowers might have been a food from outer space, as far as I was concerned. Like President Bush, I’d only eaten (reluctantly) overcooked broccoli, which as everyone knows, is a distasteful food.
But as I viewed those flowers of raw broccoli sitting incongruously on the tray next to carrot and celery sticks, something drove me to taste them.
Divine inspiration?
The crunch! The sweetness! The complex flavors!
All the good qualities of this surprisingly pleasant vegetable, when eaten raw, that my mother had consistently destroyed by cooking it.
When George H.W. Bush ran for re-election, the wives of his Democratic challengers — Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore — staged a campaign to return broccoli to the White House.
We will note that George H.W. Bush failed to be re-elected.
‘Nuff said.