Cookie pusher

The term Cookie Pusher has been applied as a reference to diplomats in general and members of the United States Foreign Service specifically.

The Listserv of the American Dialect Society documents "cookie pusher" as being coined by US diplomat Hugh S. Gibson in 1924.

The term has been used a number of times throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, sometimes in derogatory form but at other times in the spirit of a pseudonym for American Foreign Service Officers. A series of articles in the Christian Science Monitor that ran in February 1950 were subtitled "Alias Cookie Pushers." The articles were very laudatory towards the US Foreign Service, talking about the conditions encountered at the time, versus stereotypes of diplomats being "striped pants Cookie Pushers from Harvard."

Ivor Evans in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable uses the term denoting a junior diplomat who functions as a roving waiter at an official reception, presumably "pushing" appetizers on people who don't really want them.

As to these 'striped-pants' fellows, I have to take off my hat to them. I have found that through the years they have been step-children in the (diplomatic) service, so far as compensation goes... I see in the service no inducement to a young fellow to leave home, enter the service, be sent all over the world... Perhaps he rarely gets a chance to see his family or friends. Because we never see him, we reward him by calling him a cookie pusher. And the fellow himself never has a chance to say anything."

…We are also the victims of an unfortunate caricature of our profession. That is, a lot of people think we are pin-striped cookie pushers. I know that because I am a regular guest, for better or worse, on the Ollie North Show. His listeners often tell me that I'm a pin-striped cookie pusher. So we have got to find a way to communicate to the public what it is we do and who we are and why we're worth supporting. …

…It is quite clear then that the challenge to those who are responsible for protecting our citizens is to become as global and coordinated in our response as the criminals are in their operations. We must respond internationally. And who then are among the players on this international field — the diplomats. What a frightening thought! The American press, not known for its gentle touch, refers to diplomats as cookie pushers, or more charitably, as the stripe pants set. My mission today is to make a plausible case that the newest gladiators in the international crime arena are the diplomats…

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Wikipedia