gastropoda

Midway through listening to ceaseless remembrances of Daniel Schorr on NPR, I Tweeted that it was almost like hearing obituaries for journalism itself. No one seemed to see him as inspiration to fight back against stenography and the wingnut noise machine, only as “we’ll never see his like again.” And so the world is left with nonsense like the NYDaily News piece on a few old fat white people in Flushing who are bitching because their Key Food shut down for lack of business in an increasingly Asian neighborhood that is thriving with markets selling anything a real American would need if he/she weren’t too “Gran Torino”-threatened to go shopping.

Their gripe is that “other grocery stores that carry mostly American products” will be too far away. Hate to tell the overfed, but sriracha is now as American as soy sauce. The reporter, whose name sounds like someone who would have been brutally discriminated against in an earlier era, dutifully regurgitates the silly fear that Asian markets do not sell pet food (cue the “cats are for stir-frying” meme).

The sickest part of the whole tempest in a handbasket is that, despite the “food fight rages” headline, the last graf quotes the manager of the store that will replace the one they’re bitching about. Who says they will get everything they are whining for. So the News, once a paper that championed immigrants to build a circulation base, is just pandering to Teabagger jingoism. The tape wasn’t even edited and the reporter fell for it. She should be banished to Arizona to explore the state cuisine: Mexican.

Just back from Istanbul, I have to say I’m ratcheting back on my fear of reincarnation. If I have to come back, I hope to allah it’s as a Turk. This is a country where you can be pretty certain the majority of people you pass are Muslim, the believers our country is doing its damnedest to make look unhinged. I went there expecting to totally dry out, but the bars are hopping. And not only are most of them churning out mojitos in multiples, at least half of them have blackboards out front touting “sex on the beach.” It’s live and let drink.

The big welcome-back was a fresh bout of hysteria over killer produce, in guacamole and salsa. I Googled the numbers the day the freakout started, and it turns out 5,000 brave and free people die from food poisoning every year while more than 30,000 succumb to guns. But I guess it’s our constitutional right to eat lead.

Right after reading about an oceanologist who worries countless species are already going extinct in the Gulf gusher, I saw lots of Tweets about an admirable New Orleans chef suing BP for loss of seafood and business. I feel her pain, and rage. And I guess enriching lawyers is the predictable American response. But it really will do as much good as Cindy Sheehan taking Dick Cheney to court for miring us in two wars that are pumping billions to BP. Money isn’t going to change anything. Still, someone suing makes more sense than the wingnut I saw ranting that America cares more about sea turtles than the “preborn.” I assume she never eats eggs.

As I Tweeted, the first meal I ever ate alone in public was at a Woolworth’s counter, when I was getting ready to drop out of college and move to Nebraska and was training myself to do things I would be forced to in a city where I knew no one. I never would have imagined such an all-American emblem would one day be forgotten, but all the civil rights kerfuffle over the Teabaggers’ little white hope kept mentioning Walgreen’s. Which is doubly odd because that chain is relatively new to New York. At least it was somewhat amusing to think there’s a whole generation who thinks you buy food at the drugstore and cannot imagine sitting down and eating in one, let alone trying to integrate it.

And I admit I waste way too much of my limited mental energy paying attention to what comes out of the mouths of snake oil salesmen hawking gold to dupes. But I have to say Glenn Beckkk hit a funny low with his attack on his attacker, setting up a whole site devoted to “weiner” mockery. This is why kids should get educated, and not at home. So they learn it’s I before E when you’re trying to call someone a dick.

Given how much ad space soda companies are buying up for all their crap lately, I’m only surprised they have not wangled a neon sign over the Supreme Court’s main door — the one now closed to “we the people” because this land of the fearful seems to want to spend its life in Depends. It would be perfect, given that I am determined to tune out all “Is She or Isn’t She?” coverage until the Coke cans come up.

The way Arizona is acting lately makes me want to burn my replica of my birth certificate, so I’m happy to see so much blowback for its absurd overreaction. But in every mess there’s always an upside, in this case the reality that a state with no exploited immigrants is not going to be able to keep providing the whole country with dirt-cheap romaine. It’s one way to keep feces out of food.

I take a week off and all the fun stuff seems dated, but the idea of bartering chickens for health care still looks beyond satire. Stephen Colbert had the best take, of course (he’s the most underrated food commentator working these days). But there’s just something so bizarre about the same types who don’t know tea doesn’t have to come in a bag presuming everyone would have access to breasts and thighs still in their feathers.

One argument for teaching history objectively: 18 percent of the country would know what was dumped overboard in Boston Harbor was not Lipton’s. Poor fools don’t even know their namesake was not actually invented until 1909 (in Manhattan, incidentally). And I hate to go all elitist on their asses, but if they knew anything about tea they would evoke the top of the line — just go ahead and call themselves the White Party.

A couple of damning photos also made the e-rounds, contrasting Teabaggers with wackos the last time that set was so riled up and out in the streets, protesting integration as “communism” in the 1950s. The real reason for their anger is clear enough. But what’s most fascinating is that the wingnuts today are, as Fey posing as Falin pointed out, so obese they have to protest sitting down. Back then they were skinny. But of course that was before government corn subsidies made American food so cheap.

I have to say I was shocked, shocked to read the comments on one provincial paper’s website after Mrs. O had the audacity to take the kids to Grimaldi’s. (She’s a Communist, she’s spending taxpayer dollars, yadda-wacko-and-out.) There is good news, though: Wingnuts grow in Brooklyn. Which means it has not been totally overtaken by the food hipsters.

Of all the silliness in this country right now, the way the Teabaggers are taking offense at being called what they named themselves ranks right up there with no-mierda stories on how cheese has turned trendy. If they don’t like their chosen label, maybe they could find a new way to attach tea to their ridiculous hats. I guess the problem is that loose tea is elitist, and Teaballers would sound worse. But really, they’re as laughable as that Asian soup company would be if it changed its name to Rooster and attacked anyone for calling it Cock.

Talk about taking the bait: Some particularly deluded wingnuts (if that phrase isn’t redundant) started saying the Big O was going to ban sport fishing, and of course every kkkrazy lost it. If he were the malicious sort, he could wake up every day with a new way to yank their chains. Like threatening to take away their Cheetos. Or tax them.

The WSJournal’s gin expert assured readers “no one normal” watched the health reform summit, but I spent the day mesmerized online once I discovered the Sunlight Foundation was not just streaming it live but posting, as each mouthpiece spoke, all the $$$ he/she had taken from various special interests. And it all exposed just what I think the Big O (who also had his $$ totted up) wanted. It made the Party of No seem petty and ugly and over-privileged, even before the anecdote about the woman who had to wear her dead sister’s dentures was greeted with “let ’em eat applesauce” in the rabid foamosphere. I think the best response was from Steve Pearlstein in the WashPost, who said what the obstructionists propose is comparable to “offering a starving man a $2 off coupon on his next dinner at Le Bernardin.” Because those of us with insurance will still pick up the ER tab, complete with the $220-an-ounce supplement for the caviar. Heckuva job, anti-Democrats.