Pushing Popkin to the limit

Sam Popkin's The Reasoning Voter opens with a discussion of the use of food in politics. As he argues, a high profile food faux pas, such as Gerald Ford eating an unshucked tamale in San Antonio or George McGovern ordering a kosher hot dog with milk in Manhattan, can send a loud signal to voters who normally don't pay much attention to politics. So what to make of this?

Canada's governor general ate a slaughtered seal's raw heart in a show of support to the country's seal hunters, a display that a European Union spokeswoman on Tuesday called "too bizarre to acknowledge."

Governor General Michaelle Jean, the representative of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as Canada's head of state, gutted the seal and swallowed a slice of the mammal's organ late Monday after an EU vote earlier this month to impose a ban on seal products on grounds that the seal hunt is cruel.

Presumably this is an expression of support for the Inuit. Or Michaelle Jean is the most gangsta representative the Queen has ever appointed.