Sam wasn’t, and the article goes into that. He was, in fact, one of Frodo’s tenant farmers and thus part of the Baggins family’s social support network. Hence why he becomes Frodo’s ‘batman’ during the Ring Quest.

As far as the childish mischief of Merry and Pippin, in the books it’s mushrooms only, actually. And Merry and Pippin are actually much higher-ranking than Frodo, who’s a mere ‘gentlehobit’. (They are, however, also much younger; Pippin especially is barely out of what Hobbits consider childhood.)

Pippin is the son of the Thrain, the closest the Shire gets to an actual leader and nobility, as it’s his job to ‘stand in’ for the absent King. Merry is the son of the Master of Buckland, another very powerful and very old family in the Shire.