would have the desirable side effect of discouraging straight men from intruding into the conversation.

I understood exactly what Williams meant, and loved the article.

In fact, I thought she might be giving a nod to the magazine article in Harpers last year, "Debbie Does Salad: The Food Network at the frontiers of pornography" by Frederick Kaufman, about how the Food Network uses the same photography techniques as porn - and apparently has a sizeable audience of young male viewers. But I didn't have to read the article to know that the Food Network is for voyeurs, not just cooks (just like that shelf of glossy cookbooks I have and enjoy pouring over, but never cooking from. Mmm, Williams Sonoma Complete Entertainment - Hot!) I'm sure my husband and I aren't the only people who have pretty much always called that channel "food porn".

Apologies if anyone else has brought up the article in the previous letter section, but if anyone is interested here's a link: http://www.barbaranitke.com/harpersmag.html

transcript of the On the Media interview with Kaufman: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_100705_porn.html

So: Where does the "dinner hooker" controversy fall in this conversation? What do Broadsheet readers think?

I'm going to cleanse myself from this silly place by going to Heifer.org to buy a nice little hive of bees for some poor people overseas.

I wasn't offended by the metaphor - I just thought it was stupid. Clearly the writer tried to come up with some "hook" for her article and, of course, sex and sexual transactions are always good ways to try to make something more interesting than it is.

"Witty writing" ? Maybe, for some definition of wit.

Tired, tired metaphors which attempt to shock but end up flat ? Definitely. Tell me something new about Ray, don't rehash the same old stuff and try to add some S.E.X. spice into the mix.

Salon, maybe we can move on to some more interesting topics than your writers' attempts to sensationalize making dinner... yawn.

This reader thinks Broadsheet is doing what it always does...presenting internalized sexism, particularly images of women presented in the media, with little resistance or consciousness and even less depth of thought.

Defensiveness and prodding readers to not mind, e.g., "while comparisons to the oldest profession are common... Should such comparisons automatically be off limits? ...tongue-in-cheek way...or have we come far enough that it's no longer loaded..."

I haven't come that far and never will. I think you rub women's faces in coarseness, and that you, Broad, are complicit with Salon's editorial leadership in repeatedly using titillation to grab the reader. You are utterly co-opted, pink ladies, and it makes me sad.

I'm so sick of raunch. I'm sick of writing that reads like pretentious TV. I believe this culture needs help and awareness, for everyone. I have a daughter.

I'm sick at heart that Salon is not a lighthouse in the dark after all. It's like listening to Keith Olberman deliver a wonderful scolding to Bush and then a few moments later, snicker and leer over raunch involving women.

Broadsheet has always been an insult. Sex-positive, my liberated ass. It's sex in your face and not subtly.

Boring, sad, disheartening, and thin on thought. Creative, original, cliche-challenging thought.

The Broad just pokes her long laquered nail into women's bruises and says, ooo, wonder what will happen if I do THIS? She's no friend of mine.

(Just because some sex workers like what they do and have found an organized voice doesn't make it a perky little fashionable industry. It's 95% built on the bodies of runaways, most of whom were abused at home. And shame on you for not using the power of observation to figure out that hooking is a tragedy, not a joke.)

if you can't use a sexual metaphor when talking about food, when can you, oh yeah,you can when you're talking about sex, yeah that's the ticket.

I just want to throw in that I've read all the letters, both here and with the article, and I'm so glad we have this feature now and so gratified when people care enough about a subject to take the time to express their opinions about it.

Whether anyone thinks the metaphor is apt or not, I'll testify that I never simply set out to say something controversial and then built a story around it. My instincts don't work that way, and I've always bristled at other publications when editors have tried to move my stories in a more deliberately button-pushing direction. This was always just about the way I see Ray, about the peculiar way she seems to combine the soulless with the satisfying, and about the larger Food TV "food porn" juggernaut. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, reminded me of other kinds of transactions.

Incidentally, if you're a glutton (note the food metaphor, now in reverse!) for more of my incidental thoughts on sex for sale, you can read the essay I wrote for Salon a few years back Manet's Olympia:

http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/masterpiece/2002/05/13/olympia/index.html

Let's state the obvious: Rachael Ray didn't get so popular based solely on her cooking skills. If she looked like Julia Child, I doubt anyone would ever see her on television.

So yes, "dinner hooker" is entirely appropriate.

but then again I can't STAND all the references to prostitution and pimping in modern "culture." We are Rome in decline, fat and decadent.

Anyway Rachael isn't busty enough to be called a hooker about anything. You gals have it all wrong. Rachael Ray is more like the cool mom everyone wishes they had.

I didn't go for that headline. If Rachael Ray was a man, would the writer have called him "my dinner gigolo"? How about "my dinner dildo"? There are lots of ways to evoke " kind of fun shortcut that I feel a little guilty about " besides prostitution. Why does everything but everything having to do with women have to be tarted up with sex? It's not just a question of whether we have come far enough to do this without the old misogynist asssociations (I'd say we haven't--that's why we're talking about the headline) but why would anyone WANT to make this comparison? I cook dinner almost every night. It's really not much like sex.

What makes the metaphor all the stranger is that the author, as a woman, probably doesn't go to prostitutes, would probably not enjoy going to prostitutes, would probably not be thrilled if the man in her life went to a prostitute and, when called on it, compared it to making a recipe from Rachael Ray.