I think this is a case for the supreme feminist foodie herself.
The background: Chef was reading up on an Anthony Bourdain special in which the guy clubs and eats a baby seal after spilling an oil tanker in the Arctic (but not before sauteeing the firstborn son of an Inuit family with a lovely blood-orange mango sauce), and pulled me into the office to read a response Bourdain left on Megnut about the new trend of outlawing foie gras for the controversial method of gauvage.
“Interesting,” I thought. “I love it when celebrities pop up to respond to bloggers.” And then I read Bourdain’s rhetorical defense.
I would like to assure you that I have just returned from a long book tour and due entirely to your relentless nagging, took every opportunity to vent energetically, repeatedly and tiresomely to each and every journo, TV host, radio DJ and press organ I encountered on the subject of cruelty to mollusks (I’m FOR it!), the Chicago foie ban (see Chicago Tribune–or was it Sun Times in which I am quoted as referring to Chef Milhouse as a “gutless punk”–guess I won’t be getting comped at Trotter’s any time soon) and other noble yet probably “lost” causes. The fucktards at Whole Food, however, have done us a real service by providing the most ludicrous example of “animal welfare” concerns with their public hand wringing over the fate of shellfish. Comedy Gold. Extraordinary that in a time when we’re force feeding PEOPLE at Gitmo–and when hundreds of thousands of PEOPLE are starving to death in the Sudan and elsewhere, that there is no more burning issue on the minds of educated, well-fed, financially comfortable citizens than whether or not a clam feels pain–or whether a duck can handle what any respectable adult film ingenue considers routine.
Note: the rest of that thread is employed to discern whether or not Rachael Ray is fat, and not whether Bourdain’s retort of force-feeding inmates at Gitmo is a logical defense for what many consider animal cruelty. Virtually nobody took issue with Bourdain’s equivalence between gauvage and coercing an aspiring actress to fuck for a role.
So it was coincidental, I thought, when Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman* show up on Salon today to discuss the foie gras controversy. This interview is far more explanatory as to why Bourdain rips on said controversy — his argument, similar to many linguists who argue that changing a person’s dialect is an erasure of a person’s culture, Bourdain argues that ordering a person to change what he or she eats is equally cultural imperialism. It makes sense, I suppose. But hell, even I have a problem with the idea of force-feeding an animal just to eat it’s liver, and I’m no wide-eyed vegetarian.
Still, I thought, maybe this “gauvage is hott like shoving cock down a woman’s throat” was just a joke, a little quip to make the high-minded, “sex-positive” foodies chuckle. Perhaps I should file this one under “unnecessary roughness.” But, lo! Cruelty is defensible if pleasure is derivative.
[The ducks] live much better lives than any chicken that’s been sold by the colonel, that’s for sure. And really these ducks aren’t doing anything that a porn star doesn’t do on a regular basis.
Maybe in his fucking bedroom.
______________
* See the correction in the comments.
You know, I’ve never liked that pompous motherfucker, nor the way every channel pimped his Lebanon special awhile back. You know what’s really important when Beirut’s getting the shit bombed out of it? Getting the celebrity chef perspective. Absolutely vital.
I love food–fancy, cheap, and everything in between. But if we’re going to defend foie gras, well, why not revive l’ortolan?
Finally, if Rachel’s fat, I’m the Goodyear Blimp. Please.
Have you emailed that to Twisty?
Actually that post you are referring to was written by Michael Ruhlman. He’s not a celebrity chef, he’s a writer. He attended the CIA for a book he wrote, but he’s not a chef. He did a guest blogging stint on my site for about six weeks, and this was one of his entries. With regards to Bourdain and female porn stars, well I think that’s him playing with the anthropomorphization that animal rights activists employ to stir up shit. That’s all. Not that it excuses it or makes it less offensive.
My mind works in weird ways; when I first read the line “what any respectable adult film ingenue considers routine,” I assumed he meant that adults who go to the movies stuff their faces while they’re there (presumably meaning that children know better than adults to stop eating when they’re full?).
WOW ! LAUREN you have a new blog and I didn’t even KNOW !!
YAY!!!
I can’t wait to read the whole thing!!
Feminist vegetarians have been quietly (actually, not always quietly) making the case that the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women bear some striking similarities. When predatory assholes speak of longing for some “fresh meat”, the point becomes obvious. Bourdain is an eloquent example of that sort of ass.