As the foodiest of campaigns slogs on, it was rather rich to see the wearer of magic underwear strutting into a firehouse with Rudy 9/11 bearing boxes of not-even-good pizza for a photo stunt. Given NY fireguys’ reputation as great cooks, wasn’t that the equivalent of carrying coals to Austin?
And the funniest photo stunt to backfire in donkey’s years turned out to be the one staged for the KKKraziest clown in the car. When a newspaper ran a story on the latest case of mad cow disease, the picture editor pulled a stock shot of her. In a beef slaughterhouse. And not in Switzerland.
Also at the roundabout of politics and fud, I wonder how many cooks/chefs suddenly had a dream when the Big O said the right thing on marriage equality. After all these years of homophobia in whites, you have to wish the best to everyone coming out of the walk-in. . .
I see those left behind at the hometown paper are not happy about the consequences 30 years on of sitting by silently as the wingnuts came first for the air traffic controllers. Now they have a buried-the-lede video out trying to drum up sympathy that is totally undermined by two Travel developments. First the section ran a typically dazzling AA Gill feature on London that butted up against a typically dashed-off piece on where to eat in that singular city by the Egopedist. Who, as was famously described the first time I had to turn shit into Shinola, is “not a very sophisticated writer.” Hope the editors were provided bags to wear over their heads, but j’doubt it with all the $$$ going to the bought-off CEO. And then there was the cry for help that was a lede story on a luxury eatin’-and-drinkin’ vacation gone bad. Could there be clearer evidence of how “journalists” are disconnected from readers? Or more damning proof that the blind are leading the aspiring seers? I mean, I once led my consort and me to Northern Ireland after hearing only that it was home to a one-star Michelin. But the trip was worth it. And we made it before the Google. What kind of reporter heads off to drop mega-dollars without even interrogating Yelp? Oh. Right. One whose every review needs a correction. Even if she’d gone to the website, she would have gotten it wrong.
Also, too, I tuned out nearly all the fluffing for the hometown paper’s big “morality of meat-eating” debate — it had all the validity of a HuffPost boob-science screamer, with its naked intent to amass links and comments. But I did read a news story in the relatively-sedate-for-Murdoch competition on the sad state of horses in this country that subtly made a very good case for the morality of eating horsemeat: to prevent suffering. Since the animal “rights” wackos got equine slaughterhouses shut down, horses often starve before they are sent off on long, miserable drives to abattoirs north and south of the ethical borders. If I were the naive type, I’d be wondering where all the concerned citizens of California are in preventing this outrage rather than outlawing the practice of letting ducks eat like the poors. But I’m probably among the very few not surprised that a grandstander would publicly ban foie gras while privately bowing to clients for private parties. Give that paragon a cheese-ass medal.
I guess Mencken is going to have to posthumously retract his famous assertion that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Nutella just settled a suit for $3 million after a woman lost her batshit on learning that the first three letters did not lead to nutritious. Sure, who among us has not looked at a jar of chocolate-colored nut-and-sugar paste and thought: Low calorie! But my cynical side started to wonder if the whole thing had not been a click/comment trap when I saw the company is not just giving refunds to anyone who asks but also printing coupons for a buck off on a fresh jar so smart moms everywhere can “turn a balanced breakfast into a tasty one” by adding fruit and a glass of milk. Ask the cuckoo woman: Doesn’t that work with Cocoa Puffs, too?
Everyone’s yammering that JP Morgan Chase losing a coupla billion at the dog track is a reason to rein in the too-big-to-fail casinos, so let’s hope the regulatory flashlight shines toward Big Food, too. I just read about a singer forced to tour while shitting/puking his guts out thanks to the great American combination of no health insurance and salmonella in supermarket sushi, and that was after I read about the finding that the listeria in cantaloupes that killed people in 28 states was caused by new owners of a farm deciding cleanliness was not next to profitability. If you’re seeing more op-eds and other blather about the danger from farmers’ markets and small producers, connect your own dots. Of course they want you to think a manageable flock of chickens eating what comes naturally next to the arugula fields is the equivalent of a bomb in a muslin’s underpants. Corporations are people. With a fiduciary responsibility to investors, not to customers.
Finally, I’m trying to train myself to focus over here rather than tossing off 140-ers over to the Twitter. Meantime, here’s a mix of what I merely thought and what I actually sent:
–Feeling like such a loser. Haven’t figured out a way to cash in on Julia’s 100th birthday . . .
–Happy for everyone who was happy to walk away with bling from Enron on 12th Street. But a large part of me feels the way I do when I see some bodega regular collecting a $2 win on 4,220 lottery tickets. . .
–You name a cat “Cinnabun,” don’t expect it to be adopted. Any more than you would a pit bull named Baconator.
–Burgers in the sky? Does no one remember the Eleventh of September?
–Please tell me weaner is not a word. I got that e-release and actually hoped the photo would be of Anthony’s.
–And I see new documents on Hitler’s habits present the best argument yet for carnivorism. Because he was a vegetarian, “he farted constantly.” And kraut will definitely do that more than foie gras.
Way behind on posting, distracted as I am by all the KKKraziness out there on the series of tubes, but I can’t resist responding to the pitch I just got. The one that was only slightly less Onionesque than yesterday’s promoting a weight-loss “cleanse” as a Mother’s Day gift (talk about shitting where you birthed). This is for a chain whose name will not be mentioned, hyping a new chef transforming its sandwiches (lemon aioli and lemon dressing!) He can layer all the “blank” Angus onto all the “ciabatta bread” he wants. I will still read “all natural chicken” and see the counter guy at LaGuardia one morning responding to my sad request for an egg sandwich by grabbing a round of yellow rubber from the prep bins, flapping it in the air and asking: “You wanna eat this?”
Also, too, I couldn’t slog through the dirge, but was Duncan Hines mentioned in the hometown paper’s onanistic ode to one of its own? Too bad for the premature exultation, too. One more day and they could have trotted out their guy to insist he was also responsible for evolving the Big O toward marriage equality.
Just back (well, sorta just back) from Buffalo, I’m obviously having a hard time getting back on my high horse after too many weeks of distractions and deadlines. So I’m posting a few quick thoughts after sifting through a lot of chaff scribbled in a notebook and noted on paper and in Pages. I do hope my outrage meter is not wearing out after nearly 10 years. Or is it that I just need the Twitter version of Viagra to help me write longer?
As I said over to the Epi Log, this is shaping up as the foodiest campaign ever. The son of a Mormon man made a fool of himself by dissing bakery cookies, his wife had to face down a revolting birthday cake ordered by a classless fraud and all the KKKrazies lost their dung over the Big O having eaten dog as a child in Indonesia. Leave aside the embarrassment that his having done so proves he must not be a muslin (strays are not halal). What this really makes clear is that the cretins shrieking about an unvetted candidate had the straight dope all along. Next they’ll be screaming no one told them there are mega-calories in Big Macs.
Speaking of dog as dinner, though, I have to retell the story of our friend who traveled all through Vietnam for National Geographic while constantly feeling frustrated in his quest for duck. Only on the last night did his handlers understand he was not demanding dog.
Take a month or so off the bitching beat and the faux outrages fly right past. Was pink slime really a 24/7 obsession? Dirty eggs and filthier chickens? Chickenshit in the meat aisle? Pink slime from tuna? Salmonella from tuna sushi? You can’t even keep up, and certainly there’s rarely any followup. But I see everyone is determined to beat the food-deserts issue to death on a daily basis — anything that proves the poors don’t have it so bad is front-page news, even though figures lie and liars figure. As my consort always rails, every article/op-ed quoting or written by someone at a think tank should carry prominent notice of which way it leans. (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine? Hide your fur!) Reality may have a liberal bias, but no one figures like a wingnut. (I did catch just enough of the scandale over the bugs busted for coloring drinks at Starbucks, thanks to both Colbert and the Murdoch mouthpiece. No one had better alert vegans to the bugs in their chocolate, their flour and, especially, their raisins. . .)
Dr. Vino over to the Twitter passed along the best oops in a long time: an invite to a lunch showcasing Burgundy “appalachians.” I thought it meant to hint at hiking a certain trail, but he topped me with the potential of a reality show: “The Burgundy Hillbillies.”