Richard Sennett

Cheese politics

Richard Sennett dines at The Table

issue 05 April 2008

‘No buffalo-thyme pizza?’ The grazing grounds around Naples are poisoned, grounds on which herds of water buffalo feed to produce Italy’s most delicate cheese. This ecological disaster has had a knock-on effect even here in Texas, where a rather-too-elegant youth and I are taking a snack break from the rigours of the Obama campaign. Sales of buffalo mozzarella in Italy are down 30 per cent to 40 per cent, South Korea bans its import and high-class eateries like the one we are in no longer serve it.

The mere fact that a political operative could ask for buffalo-thyme pizza signals an earthquake of sorts in American life. When I began writing speeches for Democratic candidates in the 1960s, politics literally smelled: a fog of cigarette smoke and the reek of half-eaten cheeseburgers impregnated the air of offices in which we toiled.

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