That's me virtually trying a Tom Ford frame this morning. Obviously, I can't afford an actual one. I am not a Washington Post columnist.
This morning on a whim I virtually tried this Tom Ford frame and took a screenshot. On seeing how ridiculous I looked I looked for a way to pour my derision and faux anger on someone else. My right eye was already bloodshot either because of conjunctivitis or some vessel burst. That meant looking angry was not a problem.
I found a plum target in Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post humor columnist whose existence I was not aware of just five minutes before writing this post. That is a reflection on my ignorance and not his celebrity. After all, there is a twitter verified blue tick mark next to his handle. He must be important. He has over 23,000 Twitter followers compared to 459 for me.
In a column, Weingarten wrote about his dislike and contempt for various foods, including Indian cuisine, curries in particular, calling it “the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice.” That’s ignorant enough but then Weingarten whips his dick out and steps on it by saying this: “If you like Indian food, yay, you like Indian food! If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like Indian food. I don’t get it as a culinary principle.”
It was as if before writing that drivel Weingarten decided to turn himself into a duck and sit to be taken potshots at—a sitting duck, I mean. I am sure even as he was constructing those sentences he would have known the blowback it would trigger. And a blowback it did trigger, led by none other than Her Culinary Illustriousness Padma Lakshmi who pithily tweeted to Weingarten, “On behalf of 1.3 billion people, kindly f**k off.” In case, you do not know what the two asterisks mean they represent the letters u and c; read together she is asking Weingarten to “kindly fuck off” and too on behalf of 1.3 billion people. It is good she said 1.3 billion because that would include me by definition. I am glad she added "kindly" because telling him to just fuck off would be so rude.
I am not the paroxysms-of-anger-over-cultural-and-culinary-insults type. India and things Indians, including its cuisine, have such civilizational depth and self-assurance that they do not need defending in the face of a newspaper columnist oozing his bile out over it because he might have had some uncooked, spices-free red meat the night before. If you like that kind of food, yay, you like that kind of food!
To be fair Weingarten does say this, "The Indian subcontinent has vastly enriched the world, giving us chess, buttons, the mathematical concept of zero, shampoo, modern-day nonviolent political resistance, Chutes and Ladders, the Fibonacci sequence, rock candy, cataract surgery, cashmere, USB ports … and the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice." So cut him some slack. He mentions zero, shampoo, nonviolent political resistance and USB ports in one sentence. That is commendable.
First, Weingarten tried to double down on his tweet by visiting Rasika, apparently Washington D.C.’s best Indian restaurant, and tweeted this, “Took a lot of blowback for my dislike of Indian food in today's column so tonight I went to Rasika, DC's best Indian restaurant. Food was beautifully prepared yet still swimming with the herbs & spices I most despise. I take nothing back.”
That tweet was timed 10.56 a.m. yesterday. At 2.32 p.m. Weingarten had a change of heart and said this, “From start to finish plus the illo, the column was about what a whining infantile ignorant d---head I am. I should have named a single Indian dish, not the whole cuisine, & I do see how that broad-brush was insulting. Apologies.(Also, yes, curries are spice blends, not spices.)”
He called himself a “whining infantile ignorant d—head”. For those of you who do not know what the two dashes mean, they represent the letter i and c; read together he is calling himself a dickhead which is fine by me because I already said he stepped on his dick.
Some on Twitter have inevitably found his diatribe racist. I am not quite sure. Not liking particular food and expressing utter disdain for is quite fine with me. What is not fine with me is saying it could knock a vulture off a meat wagon. That is mainly because America eats with great gusto, annually, and in unbridled celebration the meat of a bird that looks like a vulture in some ways. You figure out which bird I am talking about.
There is next to no chance that Gene Weingarten would suddenly develop a taste for Indian cuisine after this blowback. It would be enough though if he developed a measure of taste.
* The headline is not a headline but a collection of keywords to make my post more searchable. After all, I am not Gene Weingarten with a verified blue tick next to my name on any social media handles.