After reading Myers’ The Moral Crusade Against Foodies (a few times), I was still unsure as to the main argument of the article. While I can comprehend “gluttony dressed up as foodie-ism is still gluttony,” the rest of the text was murky and I struggled to extract formal arguments from the vast number of textual examples employed by Myers. With the subtitle forwardly stated, where does a reader go from there? I am lead to assume, initially, that “gluttony” refers to the obesity epidemic in America – however this point was never truly addressed in the remainder of the article thus leaving my perplexed.
As I delved through the subsequent paragraphs, I noticed a trend in Myers’ article – a vicious attack on celebrity foodies such as Steingarten, Severson, Pollan and Bourdain. However, beyond these attacks, Myers fails to make/form a legitimate argument that is lucid and comprehensible to the reader. Is Myers intent to turn American culture against seemingly superior foodies who wine and dine at the most exclusive restaurants around the world? One must assume this is at least partially the intent of his article and thus, Myers article comes across as merely complaining about and attacking these foodies – and he does so in a snobby, arrogant tone that is equally as dislikeable as his thesis – or in this case, lack thereof. So, in attacking the snobby foodies, Myers comes across as snobby himself and consequently, his text seemingly belittles readers and reads rather condescendingly.
In short, I do not feel Myers’ claims in this article are legitimate in that I can barely fathom what his claims are. If Myers was attempting to conjure up disdain from readers for foodies, he should have at least provided an extensive description of what constitutes a foodie. Just because an individual has a significant interest in food, is able to spend an unusual amount of money on one meal or fly around the world to sample cheese, is not a reason to regard them as elitists – that would be unfair.
No comments:
Post a Comment