Big in Japan

Not that I’m resentful or anything, but I have to suspect the famous Doughy Pantload keeps his gig in penny-wise times because he gets so many hits even though most of the ensuing comments hit the same note: “You, sir, are a wanker. And a total cretin to boot.” If all a publication wants is traffic, it works. But it really is a sad business model for newspapers in an era of unparalleled knowledge and insight. So, not that I’m scornful or anything, the ode to the cookie older than John McCain struck me as suffering from the same motivation. This was the biggest story in the most sophisticated food city in the country? And it made something so easy so much more complicated? People eat the goddamn dough raw. The saddest thing is that I had lunch a couple of days later with a neophyte so neo he didn’t know the Scourge of New Orleans once had a show on the teevee, let alone (barely) who Pierre Franey was, and his reaction was essentially: “Aren’t all newspaper food sections that dumb?” I felt like the combined ghost of Mme X and the Crocodile in thinking: One didn’t used to be. . . .