THE GURGLING COD

Deen & class & region & gender

The Deen diabetes story gets more complicated here: 

Virginia Willis, a food writer in Atlanta, said the criticisms directed at Ms. Deen often reflect sexism and stereotyping about the South, in addition to food snobbery. “No one vilifies Michelin chefs for putting sticks of butter in their food,” Ms. Willis said. “But when a Southern woman does it, that’s tacky.” Contrary to popular belief, however, she said Ms. Deen’s fat-laden cooking does not in fact represent the apotheosis of Southern cuisine.

“Paula’s food often reflects modern cooking and convenience foods more than Southern tradition,” she said. “She feels like she cooks for ‘real people’ and for better or worse, that is how many people in this country choose to eat.”

An astute comment from Todd raised a similar issue, with more nuance. So, class, region, and gender are all on the table here. In strict terms, there is no class argument, in that Paula Deen cashed in her working-class cred the moment she inked a deal to shill Smithfield-branded that are the products of the labor of America's most desperate underclass. And restaurauteur turned corporate shill makes a pretty lousy friend to the working class. 

I've been suggesting that Deen represents a perversion of what's good about Southern food for some time now, but Acheson gets at the root of the issue better than I ever have. I don't think criticizing Deen's ethos is regional snobbery. More generally, if disliking shitty, unhealthy food = elitist, then pull the Silver Ghost around, James. 

The gender question is maybe the area where defenses like Willis's make the most sense. There is a double standard, and bodyshaming is a big part of that. The "what if this had happened to Mario" question is an interesting one. However, and this is important -- I don't recall seeing much along the lines of "fatty got diabetes, ha ha!" any more than I recall seeing people claim that ODB or Amy Winehouse got what they deserved for the choices they made. Where the criticisms came, and continue to come, is in the cynical opportunisim inherent in using this diagnosis as a rebranding opportunity. 

A challenge for Paula Deen fans

So the Times had Moskin write a thing on Deen. Evidently diabetus is right up there with Brooklyn stroller controversies when you want to get Times readers engaged: 

Evidently, "an interesting discussion" is NYTimesese for "shit is all hamhamcraycray." 

There is something vaguely unsettling about coming out as a diabetic, whilst announcing a new partnership w/ a diabetes drug co. on the Today Show, but that may be me. However, this is the moment that's the sticking point for the Cod: "But she said in an interview with the “Today” co-host Al Roker, “I’ve always encouraged moderation.”

This sounds a little bit like Andrew WK insisting that Franklin's Art of Virtue has always governed his behavior, but I'm willing to give it a chance -- in the comments, please share your favorite instance of Paula Deen encouraging moderation. Deen herself, Deen compadre Libbie Summers, Lady and Sons fans, etc, are all welcome.  Have at. 

 

Roll Tide -- early favorites for teabagging national championship?

Considering that NOLA and college football pop up in here a bit, the Cod feels an obligation to comment on the notorious post BCSTG Krystal Alabama Teabagging Incident the video is NSFW, but not for the first  bit, but throughout NSFYS (Not Safe For Your Soul). Basically, a bunch of Tide fans surround a passed out LSU fan, put garbage on him, taunt him, pick his nose, and eventually teabag him. A few thoughts and observations:

1) This is awful. All of it. 

2) Where were this bro's friends, or even other LSU fans? (Presumably even shellshocked LSU fans know better than to eat at Krystal, but still.)

3) Someone videotaped this all for close to five minutes. 

4) It's been, oh seven months since a team the Cod supports won a championship, but I don't recall an impulse to celebrate by rubbing my scrotum on a passed-out Canucks fan or anything.

5) This particular Krystal seems to take a rather laissez-faire approach to patron behavior. A Krystal employee appears at about the 3 minute mark, asks the Tide fans to stop harassing the comatose LSU fan, and then sort of wanders off. I would suggest that the management team of this Krystal have their crew read Danny Meyer's book on customer service. There is a point where an easygoing tolerance of drunk patrons shades into criminal negligence, and it's right about where your patron is too drunk to notice being teabagged. For instance, very hard to imagine the FOH staff at 11 Madison allowing this kind of thing to happen on their watch. 

6) This place has 45 reviews on Yelp. 

There ain't no Monday like a Guiteau Monday...

...'cause a Guiteau Monday don't stop. 

While folks are shooting one another in Applebee's parking lots in the 770, out West it's all about tricking for McNuggets: 

A Los Angeles woman was arrested last week for allegedly offering sexual favors at a Burbank McDonald's in exchange for Chicken McNuggets. The woman, Khadijah Baseer, was seen opening customers' car doors in the drive through late Wednesday night, according to the Burbank Leader. Baseer was allegedly offering to swap sexual favors for the fast food item. It is not known what kind of tricks she was allegedly offering to perform for what quantity of the chicken-y fried treats, or if different levels of sexual engagement would yield a larger box of nuggets. One witness reported Baseer's unique proposition to the authorities, and the woman was arrested on suspicion of prostitution.

Neither of these seems super appropriate for the holiday. However, I'd like to take a moment to call bullshit on this meme: "If (dead social activist X) were alive today, (he/she) would support (my cause y) because, (Z, it's awesome). A textbook example of this bullshit  via Eater. But try it! 

"If Rev. Wilberforce were alive today, he would stand with us in opposing unslightly windmills off of Cape Cod, because he cherished the dignity of human existence." 

"If Ralph Nader were alive today, he'd buy my free range eggs, because he wants his family, and all families, to be safe." 

So... "raw" means the bar has no trivia night?*

A follow this AM from a Williamsburg spot opening in Feb: 

Sounds good, but confused about "raw DJ bar." Do they play one Big Daddy Kane song over and over, or can you just grab a knife and help yourself to Filet o' Catchdubs or something? 

*An Awusion.

Eatin' good, er Busting Caps in the Neighborhood.

Two men who were rooting for the 49ers over the Saints were shot in the parking lot of an Applebee's restaurant in unincorporated Duluth Saturday night, according to Gwinnett County Police.

Ok:

1) Who roots for the 49ers over the Saints?

2) Who goes to Applebee's to watch football?

Present at the creation -- the Wheat Thins Twitter avatar

Some meetings are hard to imagine. Like the one for the new Wheat Thins Twitter. 

"We need to get into the social media game -- it's big with the kids." 

"Yes, but explain how!" 

"Well, we just have to associate our brand with  what the kids are into. Kids are mostly into moustaches and BDSM these days, so we'll come up with an identity that combines those things, and we'll have a winner!" 

Brilliant!'

I like to think the guy responsible for this is the same one behind Penthouse's disastrious late 1990s pee experiment, but I do know it's another Guiteau Monday.*

*If you think Guiteau Monday takes MLK day off, then you need a history lesson.  

Add Sulz(garden)berger

Turns out the Cod was not alone in noticing the heroic story of a vegetarian posted to the midwest. Via Gastropoda, a roundup of some other reactions, which round up other reactions. The Awl take is worth reading through the comments, but the CJR gets it completely wrong: 

"Not even a month after Bloom, a New Jersey native-cum-University of Iowa journalism professor went into hiding(!)* after riling Iowans with a brave?/satiric?/not-so-nice essay on The Atlantic’s website (Bloom emerged from hiding only to land in the scary-eyed grip of NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams’s Willie Geist), another east-coast media transplant has raised the hackles of the meat-eating, gun-toting Midwestern lot he’s reporting on."

As it happens, the Cod's corporeal host got quoted in an IHE response to that piece, but the Bloom article and the Sulzberger article don't have much more in common than getting rolled up in the same bit of sloppy and lazy journalism from CJR.** Bloom's piece in the Atlantic was ostensibly a portrait of the home of the first caucus, and turned out to be an unwitting chronicle of his own failure of imagination in his inability to make himself at home in the state where he's lived for two decades -- it takes an effort to live somewhere that long and still inhabit a world of stereotypes. Iowans were understandably peeved with the resulting portrait, which seemed inspired by the Eva Gabor lines in the Green Acres theme song.

On the other hand, Sulzberger's DI/DO article was pitched more at the level of the Alan Sherman classic "Hello Muddah, hello Fatha" -- the responses had a lot more to do with concern for Sulzberger's own limitations than with the picture he painted of the Midwest. It does not seem that KC suffers much in the portrayal, but it's a bit alarming to see a Times reporter write a story about the trouble he's having finding his way around his own beat. 

Where the Bloom article had its mean spirited and bitter stretches, the Sulzberger article is simply dimwitted. The divergent responses to the articles indicate to me that other than the author of this CJR piece, most folks got the difference. 

*I call bullshit on this. 

** Evidently, in  CJR reporter Erika Fry's world, what happens when you "raise the hackles of the meat-eating, gun-toting Midwestern lot [Sulberger's] reporting on" is that they suggest sugge suggest vegetarian options you might have overlooked.

A folk song about Paula Deen, with apologies to folklore

Oh, mamma sells buttery goodies, 

And they'll screw with your ol' insulin, 

But she just  inked a deal with big pharma,

And, oh how the money rolls in. 

Deen & Diabetes, or Oh, how the money rolls in.

Welp, looks like Deen is sidestepping her destiny as the face of CAFO meats to become Wilford Brimley 2.0. As Kate Harding points out, diabetes is not so funny if you've lost loved ones to it. That said, the news that she's yoking announcing her illness w/ a deal w/ Novo Nordiskc to endorse a new diabetes medication does put one in mind of the financial model in the last verse of this song.