No guessing as to who moved the cheese

Charles de Gaulle is said to have bemusedly asked as to how one could possibly govern a country that had 258 kinds of cheese. The remark might well have inspired then-US president George W Bush to borrow a line from a popular American TV show and refer to the French as ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’, because they refused to support his invasion of Iraq. What James Joyce called ‘the decaying corpse of milk’ has fomented not a few controversies, as exemplified by a right-wing religious organisation that sought to sue an Israeli dairy company for marketing Cheeses of Nazareth.

However, in the US, cheese is reportedly emerging as a bastion of feminist solidarity, at a time when America is beset by scandals of sexual harassment — and worse. The proprietress of the Dancing Goats Dairy crafted a cheese with a political message just before the last US presidential election by calling it Madam President. When the candidate of her choice got Trumped, the cheese maker renamed the product after the feisty female protagonist of the Star Wars films.

Closer to home, a prominent personality, famous for purveying tea in his youth, has become a jet-setting cheesemonger of a different sort. By whizzing around the world taking selfies with global leaders all saying ‘Cheese!’ to the camera, he’s established himself in the eyes of many as being the asli cheez.