eating for everybody

So Gordon Brown snaffles an eight course lunch after telling the rest of us not to waste food, though I bet he left a clean plate. It seems an obviously stupid thing for the G8 to do at a supposed food summit. Better to make a point of having something modest and sustaining, then inviting the hacks round to watch them gobble their chip butties and set an example.

Naturally there’s a good Veblenesque explanation for such conspicuous consumption. It matters that the G8 talk about world hunger. Why? Because the G8 is an important international institution. But how do we know this? It doesn’t make laws or set policies. We have to judge its importance by the status of those who take part, and that has to be established by prestige. They have to corrall an entire city to deliberate in, behind human walls of armed cops. They don’t just have to eat well, but eat elite. And we can’t have them eating in front of the public. Hacks have to scurry around getting hold of their 25 dish menu on the sly and then reveal it with a flourish to the gaping proles. This way we know that they are a really important organisation and that their caring about hunger matters. Now eat your greens.