I like a good fat joke as much as anybody. Making fun of the lame, the dim-witted--surely there's a place for it in comedy"
Anthony Bourdain- Ruhlman.com 2007
I have to tell you honestly I've been disillusioned before but this one hit me a bit harder then most. It's probably been particularly upsetting because I have really both liked Bourdain, and been like him. I have also line cooked, we like many of the same people, the same music, we go to the same places and we both come from the same place.
I have bought every book he's written, I own every season of his show purchased through Itunes
I have to say for a guy who is a self-described recovering heroin addict and alcoholic and a smoker who also made a comment about seeing an emphysema doctor. I think you're a little fast to lay blame there eh big guy?
What gets me even more is that when he and Nugent filmed the segment together and this part ended up on the cutting room floor. In order for this thing to end up as a vodcast (video podcast), Bourdain had to have said to someone
“That part of the interview… when I dehumanized fat people...when I encouraged a day when we go back to making it OK to physically abuse overweight children, the part where I say people who are overweight are not good Americans. The part where I rather stupidly say that while I don’t support government oversight into the way people choose to eat and then yet in almost the same breath say that I admire the people who want to put the fat tax into law. I really want to go out of my way to make sure that message gets out there”. It's so important to me to dehumanize overweight people that I want to set aside time just to make sure that part got heard. "
I mean something like that had to have happened because I really do not think that his producers wanted that out or thought it would lead anywhere good. He says that he has a great deal of creative control and apparently this is how he wanted to use that control...To say that.
I also know that it’s probably useless to point out that the fat tax actually is government oversight of peoples food. The very same thing he said in the sentance before that he did not support. How can you firmly ( three time I think) say that you don't support goverment oversite on food choices but then say the fat tax is a good idea. What about a thing that is also commonly called the Twinkie tax is in anyway not goverment oversite? Does the word tax not tip you off Tony? It was last debated not in even as a theory, some guy down south created a bill andsubmitted to congress.
Not to get that deeply into it man . But from a purely ..something standpoint. It's not like discontinuity doesnt happen, but popping one off in a three minute video is pretty lame, most authors or movie directors are at least on their second book or a sequal to a movie before they even have one.
I find it particularly ironic that a guy whose show is essentially high end and exotic Food Porn with side kinks in gluttony and weird AND a pork fat fetish, is also the same guy who thinks he should have something to say to people who overeat. Or that it's a good idea. I know alott of us would hate to admit it. Even at under 200 lbs now I wouldnt want anyone outside my house catching me watching a food porn show, but I watch them. You gotta think it must have been vital for him to do this. Who does Food Porn and still wants to piss off people who like to eat?
Not to mention that he is also admittedly a recovering heroin addict, alcoholic and thief. Though he drinks enough that the recovering part is definitely in question A guy who talked about being afraid of losing his meds on a rafting show and who talked about how pissed off his emphysema doctor will be when he sees the episode where he’s smoking a hookah, that guy is for sure someone who should be lecturing the world on proper health and social conduct.
So he says he's recoved but I've also seen him drink on TV so many times it's not funny. Well actually it was pretty funny, but thats not the point.
Anyone want to count that out?
Oh man, his one is easy. He gave up smoking for his new kid, And then when bloggers variously took or in some cases reprinted pictures of him smoking on set, he got the resturant owners to intimidated them into removing the content . Is that Unamerican?
If fat people are un-American then why aren’t smokers unpatriotic as well? Don’t people with emphysema and people who are reliant on meds also drain the system? I'm just digging myself deeper and deeper in shit here, but you DO see where I'm going right? My point is not that I'm not fucked up. My point is I didn't go on TV and talk about fat people as less then human when I'm clearly a fuck up.
I tell you what really scares me, what scares me is not the fat people on the airplane. It’s the drunks with emphysema who are passed out in the isle "blocking egress" because their lungs can’t handle getting up and running for the door and their also too fucked up to find it.
It also seems like his fatphobia is a recurrent theme with him. Again with egress thing
Look in this 2006 article in Salon "
If you're blocking egress from a burning building or taking up half my seat on a plane that is not a lifestyle choice. That is a menace to society."
Man that’s bordering on a obsession. The strongest thing I can't stop from thinking is that calling overweight people a Menace to Society always only makes me thing of this scene except with everyone over 400 lbs driving scooters and topless. You know you didn't even talk about that and I'm pissed at you for it. Shit that's disturbing.
So fat people are selfish and they are worthy of ridicule, abuse and financial penalties.
So says the guy who wrote books talking about how he spent his time shooting dope into his veins, hiring his friends and taking the lifetime investments that the owners of the restaurants that he worked for had made in him when he knew they were failing, when he knew sometimes before the job they were going to fail.
In "The nasty bits" he wrote that he knew that he people who were paying him we're going to fail. Road them like a viking death ship until it perished where he ran like a ship rat to his next victims. I'm sad to say both that i've taken jobs that sucked and I knew were not going to stay afloat too . You do what you can do put food on your table. Or maybe dope in your veins in this case .
But I really tried to make it work and if it was broken I tried to fix it, even if I couldn't I would still ask those same people,like how does this work logically. .
That this type of thing is now becoming more of a universal experiance sucks. But isn't earning money dishonestly also unamerican? I'm not saying I'm any less of a shitbag and though I'm an american I maybe have done the ulitimate unamerican thing and moved out of the country.. Hell I'm probably a commie fuck ( well actually I'm not) who belives in socialized medicine ( well actually I do).
Whatever it was though it still sounds like maybe he should be more humble. What's ethical about running people who trust you dry?
Bourdain says of his own drug use
“I only mention my junkie past in my books because I make a lot of bold, hyperbolic statements and so it's important to remind people who's talking. They need to know that I don't have an impeccable, or even respectable, background. “
And, hey speaking of misplaced trust include in that the woman he was married to for 30 years who had to put up with all his bullshit,
Is disloyalty for someone you were with during the hard times UnAmerican? 30 years, his ex wife who lived with him and loved him when he was a junkie and when he couldn’t hold down a steady job, couldn’t afford to pay the rent and after all that time...
You know after I wrote this I thought hard about how many fucked up relationships that I was in that have portrayed me as being the dickhole when I really wasn't...I don't want to edit it out. I want to say it looks shitty on paper. for him I meant. I look fine on paper. Depending on which version you get.
Lets look at some other pearls. Says no to stopping the production of Foie Gras but also says he is opposed to animal cruelty.
It's still fucking cruel and just because one farmer shows on scene. Oh fuck off, they probably get a mechanical blowjob or something that takes place just under the camera shot or their stoned or somthing.
Just because one french guy somehow gets one fucking goose to walk up to him on TV doesn't mean that their arent another eighty billion fucking Geese who hated everyday of their pathetic lives only to have it finished by having some dickhole french guy try and suck it's dick when he slipps it a mickey..Ok I don't even know what that was. But the Foie Gras thing is fucking cruel.
Yes I eat liver, yes i'm a dickhole , again the point isn't that I am, it's that he is. Don't look at me like that, BEATING KIDS IS STILL FUCKING A SHITTY THING TO TALK ABOUT. Dont judge me, judge him. I'm not writing this for you to judge me, so just stop ok?
Says Vegans are" Rude , motivated by fear and antisocial" and “That it's an insult to impoverished people everywhere if vegitarians refuse to eat meat when they travel and ignore the food choices in the countries their visiting . Visting a counry and not having the dim sum is not an insult ( it's stupidity if you really are talking dim sum though) “ More that Veganism has no benefits and in fact can’t be good at all for the planet"
When it's pointed out to him that countless peer reviewwed studies actually show it would be better for the planet and the impoverished countries if people did not eat meat, he then replies with
"What's so great about that? I'm a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us, when the blight of humanity is removed. That would be my academic argument to that."
And an academic you are at that sir.
My last point before summation. This is the one I llike the best and feel most like a dickhole about but it has to be done. Here is Tony three years ago lean and trim
What is different? No, it couldn’t be that his face just looks like he put about 50 pounds of cream cheese up his ass, or perhaps that’s not it I'm being insensitive and it's actually the steroids he has to take for emphysema. Should we understand it butterface? If Tony gets really fat will he stick by his opinion's?
I would like to think that the difference between he and I is not that I'm also not weak, sometimes in many of the same ways but is more that I know and admit to my weaknesses, failings and ignorance.
And knowing how weak, how ignorant I can be …and how badly I can fail I do not ever go and make any sort of ignorant public statement condoning violence or mistreatment or second class status of any group and I especially make sure not to judge groups that I do not or can not for whatever reason understand. What it probably really is more then anything though is that I admired this man and I'm really fucking disappointed.
For those of you with no access to Youtube at work you can download a PDF of the transcript of this video here or you can watch a quicktime version or download the actual podcast from his site HERE * keep in mind that the podcasts get archived after a few months so hopefully the YouTube video will stay up . If it doesn't and you really need to see this to believe it then send me an email I have the orginal file .
