As a gesture of solidarity with the tens of millions of carrots murdered every year to facilitate #Veganuary,” typed failed mayor Laurence Fox while still in his folk music period and presenting as a flaccid tree, “tonight I forsake vegetables.” Then he uploaded a picture of his steak. As a piece of food photography it was poor; as a statement of resistance it was powerful. Last week Fox News apologised after airing a piece titled Up in Your Grill, which claimed Biden wanted to curb meat consumption. This would include, they said, a plan to cut 90% of red meat from the American diet, leaving them with 4lb of meat a year, or “one burger a month”.
It wasn’t true, but that mattered little, because it had the green taste of something true, and it pricked in all the right places. “I’m pretty sure I ate 4lb of red meat yesterday,” Donald Trump Jr tweeted in response, a cry of freedom. Fox’s steak and little Trump’s tweet were self-portraits – food as a symbol of their identity politics.
