Senator Nancy Ruth has taken a lot of heat over her comments about refusing to settle for her free breakfast of ice cold Camembert and broken crackers, but I can’t help but find the criticism a little overdone. Camembert is a soft cheese that is meant to be spread over crackers or a nice bread. If it is ice cold it is impossible to spread. It is unclear whether the senator was served broken crackers or if they were broken when she tried to spread the cold cheese on them. I suspect it was the latter.

Some things are perfectly fine served a little cold; pizza, cheddar, revenge. Camembert is not one of them. If it is too cold to spread on the crackers, what the hell was this woman supposed to do with it? Pick it up in her hand like a Pizza Pop and just start chowing down on it? In these days of camera phones and airplane Wi-Fi, a picture of a senator gnawing on big Camembert disc would have gone viral before the plane even landed.

I will confess that I am biased by the fact that I don’t much care for Camembert myself. If I want cheese and crackers I generally stick with plain old cheddar. I never know quite what to do with the rind. I know it’s edible, but edible and appetizing are not the same; they aren’t even synonyms. If you don’t eat the rind, you end up making a god awful mess of things trying to just get at the soft cheese. It’s just not worth the trouble. Nancy Ruth may well be a typical senator’s sense of privilege and entitlement, but I can’t blame her for taking a stand against cold Camembert.