Texas Senator John Cornyn faces backlash as picture of Christmas brisket labelled a ‘monstrosity’

If there’s one thing we know about Texas, it’s that they are seriously proud of their barbecue. And with good reason.

For non-Americans, that doesn’t mean cooking food on an outdoor flame-powered grill. Barbecue in the US sense is a method of slow-cooking meat (usually) by smoking, roasting or grilling until it’s soft and tender. Sometimes the meat will be marinated in a sauce, often something sweet and sticky.

So when a Texas Senator announced that he was making barbecued brisket for his Christmas meal, you’d be forgiven for assuming this would go down well.

Unfortunately for Senator John Cornyn, this was very much not the case. His mistake? The picture.

Attached to his tweet revealing that brisket is his family’s tradition, he also posted an image, presumably of said brisket. While it’s not for us to judge how anyone likes their barbecue, suffice to say it did look a little on the dryer-than-average side…

See for yourself.

It’s pretty clear people were outraged from the brutal interaction ratio to his tweet. At the time of writing, he was looking at 3,300 likes, versus almost 20,000 replies and quote-tweets. Not good.

Among those publicly disavowing Cornyn’s version of brisket were New York Times journalist Pamela Colloff, political activist and academic Charlotte Clymer, and campaigner Ben Wessel.

Such was the furore over the picture that it was even name-checked by Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly.

It wasn’t just the cooking of the meat which sparked fury.

Many thought that it was in poor taste (no pun intended) for a Republican senator to be posting food shots considering how many Americans were struggling financially this year.

Although it’s worth noting that brisket itself is a relatively affordable cut of meat, people took issue with apparent the cost of the appliances in the background, and the fact that this is what he’d choose to use his Twitter feed for at all.

Millions of Americans are still awaiting their stimulus checks as Congressional in-fighting delayed the passing of the Covid relief package, which Trump is still refusing to sign.

Brisket debate notwithstanding, we can understand the frustration.

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