“Holiday-Food” Cartoons

’Tis the season for me to get lots of hate mail for my right-wing, mean-spirited, bigoted, Neanderthal position on….food. Yeah. Some of my most controversial cartoons are, apparently, the ones in which I make fun of what passes for food around “The Holidays”.

My response to the aforementioned emails has been to do even more such cartoons. For years now, I’ve made an annual ritual of warning merrymakers about the dangers of pseudo-foods like prepackaged “stuffing”, canned “cranberry sauce” and anything that originates with the ubiquitous “can of cream-of-mushroom soup”.

The most common charge I get is that I’m an “elitist”, because of this. Only I could get tagged as a snob for preferring cheaper, more basic food over mass-produced, prepared stuff.

I’m not pushing “fancy food”, here. On the contrary, my holiday-food tastes are as retrograde as my politics: old-fashioned mashed potatoes made from actual potatoes, for instance, and things made from other perennial populist staples, like lard, and flour, and cut-up stale bread (for stuffing, or “dressing” as folks where I’m from call it).

So, while I’m bracing myself for yet another round of holiday vitriol from quickie-food fans, here’s an  incendiary food-toon from the past to hold you over…

And, since food is on the table, check out my, and 40-something other cartoonists’, food cartoons  in Marion Nestle’s new book, “Eat Drink Vote, an Illustrated Guide to Food Politics”, at these links:

http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Drink-Vote-Illustrated-Politics/dp/1609615867