Even knowing firsthand how the Jimmy Dean’s is made, I was still surprised to see a honking huge ad for Maker’s Mark smack in the middle of a section largely devoted to the pride of Kentucky. Closer readers than I emailed me to note that the same overexposed brand was mentioned in no fewer than three of the stories. I remember the good old days when the production editor would throw a fecal fit when clean copy got too close to dirty business. (Thanks to cost cuts, has that job been made redundant, as the Brits say?) And even then the purists were not as adamant as one of the first newspaper food editors I ever freelanced for, the one who would not even allow a brand like Tabasco into recipes on her pages; it had to be “hot red pepper sauce.” Now the genie is clearly out of the bourbon bottle. No wonder the stock I bought into at more than twice the price is now selling for almost less than Heaven Hill.