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| "The Political Peanut Vender," Puck, Volume 36, Number 921, October 31, 1894, Cover Illustration. |
Politics and Peanuts – a case study in “Fake News”
“Fake news” became a common byword during the Trump era, but “fake news” did not begin or end there. While no one condones fake news (not even those who practice it), it is at least understandable that momentous issues of great importance generate conflicting characterizations depending on which side of the fence one sits. One man’s “fake news” is another woman’s “alternative facts,” “Russian collusion” or “collusion hoax,” “Ukrainian quid pro quo” or “quid pro quo Joe.”
“Fake news” is, however, less understandable when the stakes are lower, much lower – literally peanuts. But that’s the way it was in the late-summer of 1929, even with the Stock Market already in a slide that would end in a crash a couple months later. President Hoover’s peanut eating habits were in the news. Depending on the source, he either ate them or he didn’t.
Stefan Vasilakos, better known as “Steve” in Washington diplomatic circles when the diplomats are peanut hunting, has sold his goobers to five presidents of the United States during the twenty years he has held forth in front of the White House.
President Hoover, according to Steve, is the best buyer of all his presidential customers, which included Wilson, Harding, Taft and Roosevelt. Hoover seldom passes the peanut stand without making a purchase, Steve says.
St. Louis Star, August 29, 1929, page 3.
Two weeks later, the same source was quoted as saying he didn’t eat peanuts.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 5, 1929, page 4.
Conflicting accounts of Hoover’s peanut-eating proclivities were in the news again a month later when he attended game 5 of the World Series at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, where he witnessed the Athletics rally for 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, including a two run homerun to tie the game, to clinch the World Series championship.
But, did he?
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The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), October 15, 1929, page 1. |
Or didn’t he?
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The Boston Globe, October 15, 1929, page 25. |
They couldn’t both be true – one of them was “fake news.” But why?
It may impossible to ferret out precisely what engendered the controversy. But it may be related to the social status that peanuts and other snack foods like popcorn and hot dogs had at the time; they were on the one hand considered low on the social totem-pole, yet thought of as democratic, “of the people,” and quintessentially American.
Sources hyping his peanut eating might have been trying to make him out to be relatable, a man of the people, a true American.
Those casting doubt on his preference for
peanuts may have been painting him as an un-American elitist, hopelessly out of
tune with the American masses. It's
also possible that there was no good reason for any of it in the first place, just
meaningless filler to sell more papers with no attention to the truth – cheap
snackfood for the brain. My how times have changed (?).
Peanuts
A brief news item about Senators eating peanuts on the Senate floor in 1931 may shed a light on the perceived social status of peanuts at the time. Spectators in the peanut gallery were amused by the spectacle of two senators eating peanuts.
One of the most entertaining spectacles in a recent night session of the senate and one at which the gallery birds tittered, was that of Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, the immaculate Illinoisan, and Mrs. Hattie W. Caraway, senator from Arkansas, sitting together eating peanuts out of a paper bag.
The Dispatch (Moline, Illinois), December 23, 1931, page 1.
With respect to Herbert Hoover, the peanut issue arose almost immediately after clinching the nomination for President on the Republican on June 15, 1928. The initial reports, as reportedly told to The New York World by Emma C. Barker, “a motherly-looking” woman who served lunch at his offices in the Commerce Department, made the issue more about his weight than his social status.
By Leased Wire From The New York World. WASHINGTON, June 16. – Like William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover is already worrying about his girth, and at the same time is passionately fond of peanuts, eathing them – bags full – at his daily luncheon.
The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina), June 17, 1928, page 12.
But the issue quickly turned to class or caste. It wasn’t a strictly partisan issue; even political opponents came to the defense of peanuts, at least if they were the right kind of peanuts.
One of the editors of the N. Y. World is fussed because he learns “Bertie” Hoover eats peanuts for lunch, and would eat as many as the proverbial hellaphant were it not for his fear of becoming triple oversized.
This dept. will not vote, as the signs prevail at this writing, for Bertie, but it rises in defense of his love for peanuts . . . IF they are the in-the-shell kind. For lunch peanuts are not such a torrid piece de resistance. Bertie has been influenced by Barnum or maybe Hagenboeck. Peanuts, to be kind to one’s innards, whould be consumed about 10 p. m. of a night when there’s positively nothing else to do.
At 10 p.m. I enjoy roaste4d peanuts. (Salted peanuts are a sort of fairy dish.) Roasted peanuts with unpatriotic Country Club or Pabst Blue Ribbon (haven’t you tasted that one yet? Lordy me, but there’s a flavor that takes you back 12 years!) are swell.
Bertie hasn’t lost caste with me because he likes peanuts. Peanuts is good!
The Daily Times (Davenport, Iowa), July 6, 1928, page 3.
Despite that full-throated defense, it wasn’t clear whether he was politically out of the woods yet or not.
HOOVER AND PEANUTS
It is being told to the world that Hoover eats peanuts for lunch. What effect this will have on the campaign, can’t be calculated at this time but this much can be said, namely, that of all known articles of food, the peanut tops them all for nutrition. As an efficient person, Mr. Hoover would hardly be expected to resort to ice cream sodas and like trifles to satisfy his stomach requirements. The latter not only cost more but they are not as healthful as plump, double-jointed, well roasted, Virginia peanuts.
The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), July 7, 1928, page 8.
Although most observers seemed to believe that peanuts were at least “American,” the feeling was not universal.
It is announced that Mr. Hoover “eats peanuts for lunch.” An excellent diet, even if its “fundamental Americanism” be questioned.
The Greenwood Commonwealth (Greenwood, Mississippi), July 10, 1928, page 4.
The Democratic-leaning New York World returned to the topic a few weeks after opening the can of peanuts, this time focusing on how Hoover’s enjoyment of peanuts had burst their bubble about his presumed high-falutin’ ways, based on his long career working and living oversees in Australia, China and London, after trying to paint him as being an untouchable, international aristocrat.
PEANUTS FOR THE ELEPHANT.
It was a bit of a blow to us, we must confess, to learn that Mr. Hoover eats peanuts for lunch. It was all the more of a blow since we had indulge4d in considerable speculation about him in the last few months, in order to guess what he does eat, and had built up a highly romantic picture of him. We had conceived him as having acquired all sorts of curious tastes in his wide travels; as having acquired a hankering for kangaroo meant in Australia and lichee nuts in China; as having been smitten with fresh beluga caviar in Russia and assorted hors d’oevres in Belium. In short, when we imagined Mr. Hoover sitting down to his home table in Washington, we saw him surrounded with choice viands from all over the world. We thought it possible that here at last we had found the international epicure.
And now to discover that he eats peanuts, not from necessity but from preference, and that his appetite for them is restrained only by concern over an ever-increasing waist line. It is as though we found out that Jack Dempsey liked to knit. Still, his weakness for this delicacy ought not to hurt him in the campaign. If there is one thing that makes an elephant fat and strong it is peanuts. New York World.
The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, Colorado), July 16, 1928, page 4.
Hoover’s taste for peanuts was apparently not merely speculation. He was caught in the act of eating peanuts while watching Babe Ruth go hitless in five at-bats in a baseball game a few weeks later.
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The Daily Times (Davenport, Iowa), September 14, 1928, page 3. |
Hoover was not the only candidate caught eating snack foods of questionable propriety that summer; Al Smith was seen eating hot dogs.
Well, now they’ve caught Al in the act of eating hot dogs. Herbie has already struck for the peanut vote by letting it be known he eats ‘em alive and roasted.
The Daily Times (Davenport, Iowa), September 14, 1928, page 3.
After the election, with a peanut-eater headed to the White House, reporters sought the comments of peanut-vendor to the Presidents, Steve Vasilakos, who looked forward to doing land office business.
Rose days lie in wait for Steve right now, for Herbert Hoover, sixth presidential customer whom he will know, has already signified his interest in the goober, and during his Washington life has often stopped at Steve’s stand for his bag of fresh roasted peanuts. . . .
“Wilson be very nice fella’ Harding he swell guy. Taft, great old boy; Roosevelt, one mighty nice guy. Coolidge, all right, and this Hoover, say, he’s grand. He eat three or four bags peanuts to once.”
“Washington Letter,” Allene Sumner, NEA Service Writer, Greenville Daily Advocate (Greenville, Ohio), January 7, 1929, page 6.
Mrs. Hoover also proved her “thoroughly American” bona fides by driving her own car and eating peanuts with her husband at Opening Day for the Washington Sentators baseball team.
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| Herbert Hoover throws out the first ball on Opening Day, 1929. |
There’s no doubt about it now. Mrs. Lou Henry Hoover is thoroughly American and a thoroughly independent American. Washington society began to suspect that a short time ago when the first lady of the land appeared driving her own car through the maze of traffic down Pennsylvania avenue without chauffeur or secret service bodyguard. Those suspicions were borne out on the opening day of the baseball season in Washington when Mrs. Hoover, accompanying her president-husband who threw out the first ball, was seen to eat peanuts out of a bag just like anyone else. Incidentally it was noted that it was not necessary for Mr. Hoover to explain the difference between home plate and a dinner plate. There are no more positive signs of Americanism than to eat peanuts and drive one’s own car.
Battle Creek Enquirer (Battle Creek, Michigan), April 28, 1929, page 1.
It came as no surprise then, the following August, when widely circulated news items reported that the White House peanut vendor had named Hoover his best customer. It may have come as a surprise a few weeks later, when widely circulated reports said exactly the opposite. It must be true, because it was accompanied by a photograph.
The peanut-naysayers were proven wrong again during the World Series when President Hoover brought his own peanuts to game 5 in Philadelphia, peanuts he may well have purchased from Steve Vasilakos.
. . . if you don’t think we were all happy not to have to go back to Chicago, you’re crazy – but what was on my mind all the time was why President Hoover had to bring his own peanuts. . . . Say, what do you suppose was the matter with Tom Shibe’s peanuts? I though peanuts were just peanuts anywhere.
New York Daily News, October 15, 1929, page 50.
But that didn’t stop his critics from claiming otherwise.
President Fails to Eat a Peanut.
Furthermore, he at no time during the game ate a peanut. This had been widely advertised as a part of his act, and by failing to come through the President missed a grand chance to go over big with the baseball world.
The Boston Globe, October 15, 1929, page 25.
A bigger event later that month, repercussions of which resonated throughout the following decade, may have pushed the peanut issue out of the headlines for the most part, although the Hoovers were spotted eating peanuts at at least one baseball game the following summer.
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The Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia), July 31, 1930, page 10. July 1930. |
The “Great Depression” may have pushed Hoover out of the White House after the next election, but even a worldwide depression couldn’t keep peanuts or peanut vendors out of the news; although someone tried having a peanut vendor removed from his White House beat not once, but twice – if it had happened four decades later, they would have named it Peanut-gate.
“Steve” Vasilakos
Greek-born Steve Vasilakos sold peanuts, popcorn and candy to seven presidents, from a pushcart outside the White House gates from the last year of Theodore Roosevelt’s administration until half-way through Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s third term. His business first caught the eye of the press during a Red Cross fundraising drive in World War I.
Other contributions announced today are:
Steve Vasilakos, peanut vender near the White House, entire proceeds for one week, $24.
The Evening Star (Washington DC), August 15, 1917, page 16.
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| Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress. |
Some White House pickets may land in jail. Not so Steve Vasilakos, peanut vendor. Look at the sign he displays. Steve’s battleground is anywhere between the treasurey, state, war and navy buildings, and he knows by name dozens of the government officials who patronize his stand. He has already given nearly $100 to the Red Cross, and is still giving.
The Wichita Beacon, October 22, 1917, page 6.
He was still in business a decade later, despite what might be considered questionable hygiene by today’s standards.
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Evening Star (Washington DC), November 2, 1926, page 2. |
Even the pigeons raid his cart. Steve Vasilakos, the peanuts and popcorn pushcart man, who frequents Executive avenue, lately victimized by squirrels, now has the hungry pigeons to worry about. Steve really has cultivated their appetite for popcorn by feeding them, but it has gotten so now he can’t turn his back without the result shown here.
Evening Star (Washington DC), November 4, 1926, page 17.
Steve was back in the news in 1929, when he was asked about Hoover’s appetite for peanuts, and again six months later when he either said that Hoover was a good customer or didn’t eat peanuts at all. Whether it was because of buying peanuts, or despite not buying peanuts, Vasilako touted Hoover for a win over Roosevelt in 1934.
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| The Monroe News-Star (Monroe, Louisiana), October 11, 1932, page 3. |
When Calvin Coolidge died just before Franklin Roosevelt took office, they sought comments from Steve Vasilakos, who had served as an informal domestic policy advisor.
In all the land over which he ruled there is probably no more sincere mourner for Calvin Coolidge than Steve Vasilakos, the peanut vendor whose stand is on the northe4ast corner of the White House grounds.
During the happy years of the Coolidge administration the Greek curb merchant may have played, unbeknown to himself, a notable role in the drama of nations – for he was the President’s “contact man” with the masses. Every day when he was in Washington, Steve Vasilakos says, Calvin Coolidge used to stop by his stand and chat with him, maybe munching a few peanuts during the conversation.
Evening Star (Washington DC), January 6, 1933, page 7.
As he had for five previous Presidents, including one previous Roosevelt, Steve Vasilasko sold peanuts to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or at least to his wife.
Beginning with hot buttered popcorn, bought from a sidewalk vendor, and ending at midnight when she boarded train for New York, Mr. Roosevelt yesterday showed the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, how to get a lot of results in a limited time. She was celebrating her forty-ninth birthday.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 12, 1933, page 3.
Reports on how Eleanor Roosevelt’s peanut purchase made it into the news may explain how a sidewalk peanut vendor had kept his name in the news for so many years – he planted it there.
One of Washington’s snappiest press releases was issued the other day by Steve Vasilakos, who for 28 years has been running a popcorn and peanut stand on one of the White House corners. Steve took a lead pencil and a brown popcorn bag in hand and inscribed the following:
“Was certainly a great pleasure for me to wait on the new customer today at noon. The first lady of the land stopped by my stand and purchased a bag of fresh roasted popcorn for pastime while she was walking with another fine lady and with one of her favorite dogs.”
Steve was so alive to the significance of the situation that he immediately closed up his stand – though it was a find day and business was good – and dashed over the office of the Washington News with the story.
El Paso Herald-Post (El Paso, Texas), October 24, 1933, page 4.
Cultivating those relationships and keeping a high public profile paid off a few months later when the chamber of commerce tried to have him removed from his Executive Avenue location.
Steve Vasilakos, who has been selling peanuts and popcorn at a front corner of the White House grounds for 20 years, vigorously is fighting a move to get him off that corner.
A local chamber of commerce committee, interested in traffic, voted to recommend Steve’s removal from Executive Avenue. Steve, who hailed from California, promises to enlist Senator McAdoo. “This chambair think I go joost cause he say poosh?” he says. “Nevair!”
The Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin), January 16, 1934, page 1.
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| The Columbus Telegram (Columbus, Nebraska), January 17, 1934, page 3. |
SPARED BY PRESIDENTIAL INTERVENTION:
Vasilakos, peanut vendor outside the White House grounds for the last 29 years, who retains his post following President Roosevelt’s request to the police that they rescind an order for him to remove his stand.
The Brooklyn Citizen, January 22, 1934, page 12.
Pensacola News Journal (Pensacola, Florida), February 2, 1934, page 7.
But even a popular President and First Lady couldn’t put an end to the controversy. Complaints of special treatment and favoritism followed in the wake of the Presidential peanut pardon.
The nation’s capital is in the throes of a “peanut war.”
Its participants are trying to make out it isn’t a fight at all, but there are too many practiced “official observers” in Washington to let a thing like this go by pacifically.
The conflict seems to have started over the popularity of one Steve Vasilakos with the “First Family of the Land.”
About two months ago an executive order told the Fine Arts commission here that Steve could and would stay on “his corner” just outside the White House grounds, where he has vended peanuts to the families and staffs of who knows how many Presidents. The commission wanted to remove his stand as an eyesore, but Mrs. Roosevelt read about it in the newspapers, and asked her husband for the decree.
There is a law in the district that peanut venders cannot vend peanuts on Sunday. But Steve, “friend of the President,” vends to his heart’s content.
Another “knight of the roaster whistle” wrote Mrs. Mary T. Norton, chairman of the House district committee, asking that the privilege be extended, and pointed to Steve as an example of “favoritism.”
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The Greenville News (Greenville, South Carolina), May 17, 1934, page 14.
The storm may have passed, but memories are long, and revenge is a dish best served cold - not hot roasted.
Two years later, Mrs. Roosevelt had to intercede on his behalf again, following his arrest for obstructing traffic. This time, however, she couldn’t save his entire sales territory along Executive Avenue. But she did save his business, giving him a permanent spot right at the White House gates.
The right of Steve Vasilakos to sell peanuts near the White House was upheld today when Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt offered him a stand at the very gates of the President’s mansion.
Complaining that Steve’s peanut stand interfered with traffic, police early this week arrested him. Today, it was learned, Mrs. Roosevelt asked the White House staff to write district police executives that she would “miss him at the corner” and suggesting, “we had better let him stand at the White House gates.”
Police said Steve would be let alone henceforth.
The Atlanta Constitution, September 24, 1936, page 2.
Steve Vasilakos was not content to limit his political activities to advising mere Presidents, he also consulted with Kings – well, at least one King, at least once. When King George II of Greece visited Washington DC during the height of World War II, Steve rang the doorbell at the Blair House and introduced himself to the King.
King George II of Greece and the little American business man who is closest to President Roosevelt had a private chat today and the visiting monarch got a report that in “dis country, tings is coming right along.”
His majesty’s informant was Steve Vasilakos, the Greek-born vender who had sold peanuts and pop-corn from his small stand beside the White House for 32 years.
Steve is a naturalized citizen now, but he is very proud of the fight the folks in the old country put up against the Axis invaders.
Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia), June 16, 1942, page 6.
Other prominent customers who visited his cart before his death included the financier and Presidential advisor, Bernard Baruch, and the Soviet Union Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov, namesake of the Molotov “cocktail.”
Steve Vasilaskos passed away less than a year later, in February 1943. He reportedly died penniless, in part because he donated much of his profits in his final days to Greek war relief. He also sold War Bonds to raise money for the United States’ war effort.
He had sold peanuts and, more recently, War Bonds from a little cart on a corner near the White House since the days of President Theodore Roosevelt. . . .
Steve was credited with selling $50,000 worth of War Bonds . . . . Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas was his first bond customer and received Steve’s sales-resistance-breaker-downer – a free bag of peanuts.
Pittsburgh Press, March 1, 1943, page 9.
With Steve’s passing, peanuts wouldn’t play as large in politics for another thirty-three years, when a peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, sought and won the Presidency. If Vasilakos had lasted that long, he could have purchased them from Jimmy wholesale and sold them back to him retail. It may not have been much of a profit margin, but it wouldn’t have been “peanuts.”
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