We got a call from Sarah in Dresden, Germany, who’s applying to work for the State Department as foreign service officer. She was curious about an article that contained the term pinstriped cookie-pusher. According to William Safire’s Political Dictionary, this bit of derogatory slang came into use in the 1920s to refer to diplomats who were perceived as soft or even effeminate. These men in pinstriped suits would attend receptions at embassies where they’d push cookies instead of paper. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pinstriped Cookie-Pushers”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. This is Sarah, and I’m calling from Dresden, Germany, but I’m originally from San Diego.
Excellent. Well, good to talk with you. What’s up?
Well, I am currently in the process of applying to be a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department.
And while I was doing some research and kind of looking around at different articles on the web, I stumbled across an article on Wikipedia for the phrase, Pinstripes Cookie Pusher, which was linked to a Foreign Service article on Wikipedia.
And obviously I had to click on it, because I thought that was a very colorful phrase. Pinstripes Cookie Pusher.
And it refers to U.S. Diplomats, or diplomats in general, but U.S. Diplomats in particular.
And I think I basically understand what it means, but it just seemed like such a strange, colorful phrase that I thought that you might have something interesting to share about the history or exactly what it means.
I’ve also heard it, Sarah, as striped pants cookie pusher.
Oh, really?
Yes. I included an entry for this in my political slang dictionary I did a few years ago, but a better entry for this is in William Sapphire’s political dictionary.
He has a whole column on this, basically half of a page on this, and he traces it back to the 1920s between World War I and World War II.
This was a period of intense diplomatic negotiation. And there was a lot of bickering about the way that the former allies were handling their new relationships with their past allies and their past enemies.
And a lot of hardliners and a lot of people who thought that only guns and boots were the way to handle these people or like force and strong talk thought that the diplomatic community was kind of ruining this.
That they were having all these teas and coffees and coddling these people and try to buddy up with them.
And basically, maybe even having more in common with the enemy or the perceived enemy than they did with the United States.
And there’s another notion here, and you can find this throughout the military as well, is that the so-called cookie pushers were the kind of people who were assumed not to be doing real work.
That they were the ones who were simply like putting a rubber stamp on paper, pulling it out of the inbox, stamping it and putting it in the outbox and not doing anything meaningful to change the world or better the relationship that the country has with the rest of the planet.
The interesting thing that the pinstripe is still in there. Even today, people use it, even though pinstripes as a fashion element aren’t really a thing that you would think of associating with diplomats.
I mean, it’s just one of the palliative options. But at the time, a pinstripe suit was very much kind of a uniform for this type of person.
Why cookie pusher?
Well, literally, you have these receptions at the embassy or wherever for all these different people in the diplomatic community to come.
And there are little trays of sandwiches and little trays of cookies and little cups of tea and things like that.
You are literally holding a tray of cookies. You’re not forcing people to eat them. You’re not pushing them that way, right?
It’s like paper pusher, right?
Exactly.
Exactly. It definitely corresponds to paper pusher.
It’s all incredibly interesting. But there’s a third element here that I think it has to be addressed.
A lot of times, particularly in the older uses of this term, it’s a mask for calling these people homosexuals.
And it almost always refers to men who are seen as too effeminate or too effete to actually have the brass to do what needs to be done.
Well, that’s just fascinating. Thank you for all of that insight.
And I’ll definitely look at these political dictionaries to know what other phrases I should know before going into the diplomatic service.
Yeah, the late William Sapphire, his political dictionary, it’s the masterwork on political language in the United States. It’s very good.
Well, thank you guys so much for taking my question. I’ve been a fan of the show for years.
So I jumped at the opportunity to have something to comment about.
Great.
Well, best of luck with the State Department. I hope that everything goes well with your career.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
You guys take care.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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