In a comment on yesterday’s postage about Nixonian soup hatred, Salim Fadhley asks the intriguing question if the serving of shark’s fin soup at a dinner on the President’s state visit to China in 1972 prompted one of his “six crises”. We shall overlook the fact that Nixon published his book of that title ten years earlier, in 1962, and we shall also overlook the fact that Mr Fadhley’s question is easily answered, either by reading the book itself or, if the prospect of hundreds of pages of Nixonian prose does not appeal, a summary of its contents which can be found on the wikipedia. We will soon learn that the shark’s fin soup did not pose a crisis for Nixon, or at least not one of the six he wrote about.
But that is so disappointing, is it not? I would prefer to think that there is another book by Nixon, entitled perhaps Soup Crises, in which the thirty-seventh Potus describes in dramatic and unflinching detail the various soup crises he had to face. If, in the course of his life, there were only four soup crises, then an alternative title for the book could be The Four Soups. Happily, this is an anagram of House Of Turps, an out of print pamphlet by Mr Key. Could it be that I was anagrammatically channelling Nixon in 1989? I must consult a brain quack to delve into this important question.
Soup was mentioned by both Khrushchev and Nixon in the Kitchen Debate:
Khrushchev: On politics, we will never agree with you. For instance, Mikoyan likes very peppery soup. I do not. But this does not mean that we do not get along.
Nixon: You can learn from us, and we can learn from you. There must be a free exchange. Let the people choose the kind of house, the kind of soup, the kind of ideas that they want.
How fitting that Nixon uses soup as a metaphor for Liberty itself.