Post Category → wingnuttery

And “the Indian Nigella Lawson”

With the kkkraziness spreading, I also find it fascinating how the wingnuts seem to model their headliners on Food Network stars. Jon Stewart nailed it with “a less slutty Rachael Ray” for the train wreck in Delaware, but most of the other candidates look as if their oversized heads and flashing cleavage belong behind a “meez on PLASS” on a fake set somewhere. It’s also telling that campaign contributions were apparently stolen to pay for a meal at a chain boasting of “fresh quality ingredients, bold flavors and handcrafted cocktails.” Don’t real ’mericans eat at Applebee’s?

Permission to bring older Riojas

I know the first black First Lady can’t pick a chocolate brown pepper without getting slimed by the knuckle-draggers for being an out-of-touch, overspending elitist, so it’s fascinating to realize the same press corpse that dutifully regurgitates the rabid foaming is so clueless, too, and not just at the Rupert Rag. Vacation or not, was this really the best time for a wine writer to be reporting back on an oh-so-fortuitous reservation at/expedition to one of the most expensive restaurants in the world? The big debate this week, after all, was whether a country drowning in debt from two wars could afford both food stamps and improved school lunches. Thank allah for Stephen Colbert’s mega-cojones in going before the House to talk about who’s picking our cheap lettuce and tomatoes, and why. To the “serious” “journalists,” and the lobbyist-owned Congresscritters, it was all a stunt. To the rest of America, it looks as if they all deserve some serious corn packing.

But the whine in first class is “delicious”

When I read about the flight attendant who was fired for admitting she can’t get by without food stamps, half of me started to hope the DC bloviators are right and the guys who drove the country into the ditch get a fresh chance at the wheel. Maybe people will finally understand capitalism lets airlines gouge for pretzels while relying on socialism to keep the help fed. Heckuva job, free marketeers.

“There aren’t enough bodies in the street”

At least the dots have finally, finally been connected between what Rick Perlstein memorably dubbed E. coli conservatism and the obscenely huge egg recall (which overshadowed news of the cold cut recall, and the latest tons-of-ground-beef recall). There’s way too much trust in the free market policing itself when greed is the national creed, and when profits are all that matter, shit inevitably happens. It’s always mystified me why Americans just take manure in their meat for granted but can be fanned into hysteria over “killer tomatoes.” At least eggs have finally have hit home. About the sickest my consort and I ever got was after spending a day in an onion field in Georgia that abutted an egg factory farm, in 1992. And that was just from breathing in. Anyone who thinks a clean egg can ever come from that environment should enjoy all the lovely products to be made from the befouled ones from Iowa, which are being “salvaged” and pasteurized. If you want cheap food, you get the filth for free.

Cookie-cutter sharia signs

I knew way back when Bill O’Reilly misused a falafel things would be heading nowhere good. But this “mosque” nonsense is seriously out of control. I’m starting to think the real terror threat is what the planned community center will include: a school. It’s a cooking school, but that five-letter word is obviously pretty frightening to the easily misled. Or, as they spell it, morans.

Is it Kewpie, or is it Hellmann’s?

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.

“Rose wine,” too

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.

Chicken nuggets, now with plastic

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.

Take a table? Nah, sign a petition

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.

Soup Nazi or libertarian?

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.

Pluralizing with an apostrophe

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.

Long Dong at bat

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.

State bread? Tortilla

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.

Pluck ’em

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.