Sunday Times E-Edition

Salad days over as mayors dream of miracles

By SUE DE GROOT

What many media outlets have been calling “Game of Mayors” (an obvious reference to the bloody battles in Game of Thrones) have kept audiences both enthralled and appalled this week.

The scuffles and dust-ups in the mayoral departures and arrivals hall might have been entertaining, but they also show what a tough job it is to be a mayor.

The word “mayor” is the anglicised version of the 13th-century French maire, meaning head of a city or town government, but this position of authority predated the name.

The dukes of Normandy (in what is now France) started the tradition of making their chief civic official wear a chain around his neck (it could only be a “him” in those days) in about the year 900. This symbolic chain of office tradition continues, though considering this week’s events the chain might also represent an object of torture or restraint. As if polony and culottes weren’t enough, that heavy chain is yet another thing to blame on the French.

Incidentally, the word “mayoress” was coined in the late 1500s and meant merely “the wife of a mayor” until 1863, when it was permitted to describe a “woman holding the office of mayor”. Now mayors are just mayors regardless of gender and their tasks are still just as difficult.

Linguistically speaking, the earliest roots of the word go back to the Latin major, indicating greatness, superiority, strength, power and importance. Few mayors have managed to hold on to their major status, however.

Getting back to the French, they also gave us mayonnaise, which mitigates slightly against mayoral chains and other unwelcome burdens (who on earth thought snails should be a delicacy?).

Mayonnaise, says the Online Etymology in a rare descent into levity, is “an inferior form of Miracle Whip”.

Miracle Whip, introduced to the US market in 1933, is manufactured by Kraft (now Kraft Heinz) as a cheaper imitation of mayonnaise. It contains water, soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, vinegar, modified cornstarch, eggs, salt, mustard flour, potassium sorbate, paprika and dried garlic.

Mayonnaise, originally mahonnaise, was brought to France in the 1800s after the French defeated the British to take the town of Mahon on the island of Minorca. In its classic form it contains only egg yolks, oil, mustard, salt and either vinegar or lemon juice.

The rivalry between the pro-mayonnaise lobby and the Miracle Whip lovers can become almost as intense as our mayor wars. In a “debate” on the ARS Open Forum, these shots were fired by members:

“Miracle Whip sucks. The only miracle is that their marketing works well enough to get people to buy that s**t.”

“I was once a mayo-only kind of guy, then last month I had a sandwich made by someone else that was quite tasty. I inquired as to what kind of mayo was on the sandwich and the maker said, ‘It’s not mayo. It’s Miracle Whip’.”

“My son and I love Miracle Whip, but my wife and daughter can’t stand it and eat Hellmann’s. Of course they are odd and put mayo on their hot dogs also.”

“Both mayo and Miracle Whip are oil suspended in a protein matrix. They’re spreadable fat.”

“If I could, I would vote like six times for mayo, and put in negative votes for Miracle Whip.”

If you ask me, mayo is the mayor of condiments and Miracle Whip a lowly pretender to the chain, but I can think of a few mayors who would give a lot for a different kind of miracle whip right now.

Incidentally, the nickname “mayo”, first used in print in 1930, has nothing at all do with County Mayo in Ireland, first inhabited by humans in 7000 BC and named for its indigenous vegetation the Irish name for Mayo is Maigh Eo, which means “plain of yew trees”.

I don’t know who the mayor of Mayo is, but a famous quote from a long-gone leader seems surreally appropriate in these times of mayoral maiming and manipulation. Lyndon B Johnson, 36th president of the US, once said: “When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.”

News | Society

en-za

2023-01-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://times-e-editions.pressreader.com/article/281771338327867

Arena Holdings PTY