(Roughly) Daily

There’s a long history of incorporating food into political protest (Boston Tea Party, anyone?), with written record dating all the way back to the early-’60s CE, when Vespasian, a proconsulate in Africa and a future emperor of Rome, was apparently so unpopular for his economic policies that he was pelted with turnips by the local populace. Although this time-honored tradition has never truly fallen out of fashion, recent years have seen a resurgence in the hurling of foodstuff — particularly eggs, like the one wielded by the teenager known as “Egg Boy,” who cracked one on the head of an Australian politician who blamed immigration for the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand — and now we’ve arrived at milkshakes.

So how exactly does a person choose the perfect food for a protest? Mind you, this isn’t something we recommend you do — lobbing food at someone could constitute battery or assault — but it’s worth considering what makes a good food projectile, whether you’re on the giving or receiving end. Or maybe you’re like us and what you really want is simply to learn…

[Following is] a list of historic protest foods, ranked  using the following criteria:

Convenience: How easy is it to acquire and carry this object without suspicion?

Cost: Will hurling this object be the real-life equivalent of the “money with wings” emoji?

Accuracy: How precise of a projectile does this object make, taking into consideration properties like drag, gravity, thrust, and lift?

Messiness: Does the object splatter, stain, or otherwise necessitate cleanup that’s a pain in the ass?

Smell: How much will the physical memory of the act linger in the nostrils, following the target the rest of the day like an unfriendly ghost?

Symbolic or historical resonance: Does the object represent something greater, or reference a long tradition of throwing said object?

Humiliation: While admittedly ambiguous, this last attribute can be summed up as: “You know it when you see it.”…

The ultimate act of dissent? “Milkshakes, Eggs, and Other Throwable Protest Foods, Ranked”

See also: “Milkshaking.”

* Michel Foucault

###

As we shop with care, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that an 18½-minute gap appeared in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

According to President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, on September 29, 1973, she was reviewing a tape of the June 20, 1972, recordings when she made “a terrible mistake” during transcription. While playing the tape on a Uher 5000, she answered a phone call. Reaching for the Uher 5000 stop button, she said that she mistakenly hit the button next to it, the record button. For the duration of the phone call, about 5 minutes, she kept her foot on the device’s pedal, causing a five-minute portion of the tape to be rerecorded. When she listened to the tape, the gap had grown to ​18 ¹⁄₂ minutes. She later insisted that she was not responsible for the remaining 13 minutes of buzz.

The contents missing from the recording remain unknown, though the gap occurs during a conversation between Nixon and H. R. Haldeman, three days after the Watergate break in. Nixon claimed not to know the topic or topics discussed during the gap.^[19] Haldeman’s notes from the meeting show that among the topics of discussion were the arrests at the Watergate Hotel…

Woods was asked to replicate the position she took to cause that accident. Seated at a desk, she reached far back over her left shoulder for a telephone as her foot applied pressure to the pedal controlling the transcription machine. Her posture during the demonstration, dubbed the “Rose Mary Stretch”, resulted in many political commentators questioning the validity of the explanation…  [source]

Rosemary Woods, attempting to illustrate “The Rosemary Stretch”