Big Block of Cheese Day

BY STEPHEN LEE /November 1, 2005

The staff participates in "Big Block of Cheese Day", a workday on which White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry encourages his staff to meet with fringe special interest groups that normally would not get attention from the White House.

The rationale for the day, as recounted by McGarry (much to the consternation of the Senior Staff), is that America's seventh president, Andrew Jackson, had a two-ton block of cheese in the White House foyer from which everyone was welcome to eat.

Real Life at the White House confirms that the big block of cheese was an actual historical fact. The 'Cheshire Mammoth Cheese' was first made and presented to President Andrew Jackson on January 1, 1837, by John Leland. Leland considered the gift of the 1,400-pound, four-foot-diameter, two-foot-thick block of cheese an act of "profound respect...to the popular ratification of a President's election." After two years of aging, Jackson held a public "cheese tasting". The event was heavily attended, and the cheese was consumed in two hours.

White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler derisively refers to the day as "Throw Open Our Office Doors To People Who Want To Discuss Things That We Could Care Less About Day", and Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman refers to it as "Total Crackpot Day". However, according to McGarry, President Jackson's block of cheese symbolized the openness of the White House to the American people.

White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg meets with a group about building a highway for wolves, as well as the Cartographers for Social Justice. Speechwriter Sam Seaborn meets with a citizen concerned about UFOs, while Toby is sent to meet a group of protestors picketing the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization.