Ketchup, and other vegetables?

I've noticed that, just as every media outlet appears to be contractually obliged to call John McCain a maverick eleven or twelve times a day, claims of elitism in a candidate can only be valid with the evidence of:

a) latte drinking
b) arugula

I find the latte bit more puzzling, because everybody drinks them. Hell, I've even come across the term "latteconomizing", in a Tribune advice column, in reference to cutting back on ones' twice-daily trips to Starbucks to offset the pinch of our economic downturn.

The slander against arugula leaves me not so much confused as indignant. In the first place, there's really nothing so fancy about it. It's just another salad green, and one which costs slightly less than the supposedly more proletarian bags of spinach that sit next to it in our local grocery store. And it's delicious. So, America, shut up and eat your damn vegetables.

(I'm also reminded of a tidbit I encountered in some American History class: Somewhere around the 1700's, there was a law in New England that you could only make your indentured servants eat lobster a few days out of the year, since they regarded them as horrifying sea-bugs)

And in the spirit of cataloguing snobbish vegetables consumed by educated white people, this is what Joel and I had for dinner last night:

(Let's say it together kids! Ar-ti-choke!)

If I were a more diligent photo-taker, I'd have started clicking as I was cooking these beasties, because they are spiny and peculiar-looking, and come with stems that must be removed with a great hack from a knife. But as you can see, I caught the aftermath:

What I love about eating artichokes is the process, peeling and gnawing the leaves, working your way to the innards. This is the opposite of a snack, a food that requires commitment and attention, as well as the imagination to suppose that a spiny cactus-thing could be good to eat:

Needless to say, if Rush Limbaugh comes out with the breaking scandal that Obama likes to follow his arugula lattes with a side of artichokes and socialized medicine, I'll be okay with that.