A friend sent me a link to this tirade about “foodies” in the Atlantic recently. I get the point, but the piece is so full of strawmen, surmise, and hyperbole that it robs itself of any real impact. I guess that’s not surprising, since The Atlantic continues to employ embarrassingly sloppy corporatist hack extraordinaire Megan McArdle as their Business and Economics editor. She’s so bad that she actually almost cancels out the brilliance of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Evidently they envy the New Republic’s plummet into ignominy and uselessness and are keen to follow.
I remember being in China with a group from college for six weeks; at the time I was a vegetarian and couldn’t get over the nerve of the so-called carnivores who would recoil in horror at half the dishes put before them. That squeamish hypocrisy is absolutely a legitimate target for scorn and mockery. Plus, they ate all our broccoli and tofu because beef tendon? Eeeeew! And pompous, bombastic gluttons like Jeffrey Steingarten are just that. (Also, if he needs a week of afternoons to plan to make ribs, dude is as out of his depth as McMegan).
