Sam Sifton, Food Critic and Asshole

He wrote yesterday about eating bluefin tuna for the New York Times, and after the inevitable backlash now wonders if it’s OK to write about gobbling up endangered fish:

And yet there I was in the restaurant and I ate that bluefin tuna, which wherever you stand on the issue you must admit is delicious, and I wrote about it.

Is this “promotion” of bluefin tuna, as @oceana, the Tweepersona of Oceana, an international ocean conservation and advocacy organization, alleges? There are certainly many online who say that it is.

Here’s a quote from his original article:

Some will take issue with the fact that Masa serves an enormous amount of bluefin tuna, a fish that some say hovers on the brink of collapse as a species.

What’s this “some say” bullshit? Nobody doubts that the species is on the brink of being deliberately wiped out, specifically so that asshats like Sifton can gorge themselves on $750 dinners. It’s amazing how many food writers lack a moral compass. And Sifton’s got as bad a case of foodie-induced moral relativism as I’ve ever seen. (Via Crossfield.) Link.

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