Letters to the Editor
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Down with snobbery!
Snobbery, whether in food or in art, comes not from knowledge. As everybody's grandmother says: "It's not what you know, it's what you do." [See, for instance, an excellent Saturday Night Live sketch with Dana Carvey as George Will(?) and Jon Lovitz as Tommy Lasorda(?) on the snobbery associated with the literary celebration of baseball]
Celebrations of snobbery - celebrations of obnoxious behaviour in general - are not ironic; they are the continuation of a gross misinterpretation of the maxim "If you can't laugh at yourself..." This maxim encourages us to learn from our mistakes while keeping a cool head, not repeating those mistakes or enshrining them in tradition.
But it's hard to pursue knowledge for the goal of self-improvement (in all possible ways) if knowledge becomes just another commodity that gets its value from the money it brings us or the status it gives us.
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Cretins
As an indicator of how little these two understand what irony is, look at how their bios try so goddam hard to be ironically snobby and end up being tacky instead.
See you jerkwads at MLA. I'll be eating the deep dish and bratwurst.
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Liking virgin olive oil is snobbery?
Only in America ....
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Sorry. It does make you a jerk.
My ex-girlfriend insisted that we watch Barbra Streisand's concert for "ecology" or something on HBO. Kind of fraudulent, gathering together a few hundred celebrities in her own private, rich-person-only grove to talk about common people, but the real fraudulence began when she stopped singing and started to talk.
She mourned the ecological accidents and the evil nuclear reactors that made it impossible for everyone to eat "cheese from France." And in my own head...for saying it in front of my girlfriend would get my crotch kicked...I yelled "WHO THE HELL EATS CHEESE FROM FRANCE????"
Answer: Rich, disconnected people like Streisand. Real people eat cheese in plastic-wrapped slices, because the non-sliced stuff will go bad in the refrigerator, because nobody eats that much cheese at once.
Streisand deserves every insult Trey Parker and Matt Stone can concoct for her, and the people who eat this unaffordable and pretentious food, when they go to Hell, will be forced to eat at McDonald's for eternity.
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Oh my gawd - Tomreedtoon are you serious?
So real people eat Kraft slices? Only disconnected snobs eat cheese from France? Pah!
Kraft slices have there place - junk food can really hit the spot sometimes, but, jeeze, who the hell eats that stuff regularly? A nice, on sale chunk of old cheddar lasts months in the fridge (cut off the mold, and voila, extra aged!).
I'm no food snob, but I do love food. Having said that, I've got friends who really could give a good goddamn about artisanal cheese or organic olive oil - doesn't mean they live on K-Dinner and ketchup. Also, I've never noticed any connection between eating plastic food and being more 'real' or salt of the earth.
And what the heck does Barbara Streisand have to do with food snobbery? Or rock snobbery?
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I prefer my Feta Dutch and my lamb Greek
I eat quiche, can make some really nice cakes, know my way around a decent salad, and frequent the top restuarants in my neighbourhood.
I know the difference between a Itallian and a South African olive oil (South African is generally better) and have a nice collection of infused balsamic vinegars (Along with plain, normal balsamic vinegar.)
I feel that MacDonalds is a war-crime.
Yet I am not a food snob.
Why? because I don't pretend to like something just because it is rich-mans food and I don't view what I eat as a status symbol. If you geniunely like food, eat it, if you don't, don't.
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Exactly, Taliesan!
I was just coming here to say that snobbery, in any form, is a matter of attitude, not taste.
In my age group (early 20's), what I see most often by far is music snobbery, and it irritates the hell out of me. Do I, personally, listen to a lot of music that a many people haven't heard of? Yes. Am I a snob about it? No, because I don't look down on people for listening to the music that they like, no matter how mainstream or "sold-out" it is.
I would much rather spend time with a person who is passionate (but not snobby) about...oh, hardcore rock music (which is not my personal taste in the slightest) than the hipster who purports to love music but only the "good kinds"--you know, the obscure bands who lose their cool factor as soon as three other people know about them.
This is sort of a sore subject with me, obviously. I think snobbery is rampant these days, and it's a shame.
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There is nothing wrong with eating quality food.
That includes eating cheese from France.
I am grateful that I can afford high quality virgin olive oil and other good foods, and see no reason to apologize for doing so.
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Balsalmic Dreams
No discussion of snobs should forget Balsalmic Dreams, Joe Queenan's hilarious send up of baby boomers and the warped idea that an item's value is inversely proportional to the number of people who can appreciate it. The more obscure, the greater it must be!
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Nearly?
"... the nearly Aspergerian pop-cultural patter that passes for dialogue in film snob hero/ex-video store clerk Quentin Tarantino's films. "
What makes you think he's not? It would certainly explain a lot.
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I'm snobby about cheese
tomreedtoon alleges that I'm rich and disconnected from the rest of the world because I occasionally like semi-expensive cheese.
But I like eating cheese for its own sake, and not just because a recipe calls for it. If the cheese is not incorporated into a dish, the complexities (or lack of same) are readily apparent. Generic "parmesan style" cheese just doesn't have the complex nutty aromas or textures that I'm looking for when I savor cheese on its own.
Jeremy Erwin
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Apart from the Asperger aspect,
a funny, discriminating article, about a series that parodies all the Idiot's and Dummy's guides to everything in the world (my favorite: The Idiot's Guide To Pregnancy) and brings back memories of the better old days of Salon when it had some intelligence in its cultural writing. More, please.
You can tell it's good because it's bringing out the rightwing snarkhounds. We've already had Tomreedtoon telling us that the only good cheese comes wrapped in plastic slices (everyone knows its the only real American cheese!) even managing to drag in Barbra Streisand. Now we need Realname coming out for Red Lobster and ~guy on the merits of his Uncle Dick's greasy spoon, which features only dishes made from things in cans.