He just tried the chicken feet stewed in antibiotics.
Posted on 07/16/2007 6:50:19 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
...Nevertheless, China has been portrayed as a nation blind to hygiene and blissfully unconcerned about recent reports of food contamination. That's troubling, because it reinforces the notion that befouled food is the consequence of a foul culture. Chef and gustatory adventurer Anthony Bourdain may have said it best in a 2006 Salon interview in which he noted that there's "something kind of racist" about culinary xenophobia: "Fear of dirt is often indistinguishable from the fear of unnamed dirty people."
And this, in turn, spells danger. What one might call "food libel" has long been an aspect of a larger fear of China. The association of Chinese with dubious edibles has insinuated itself into our cultural consciousness in small and seemingly trivial ways -- in schoolyard taunting, in sitcom gags about takeout food, in standup monologues about puppy chow mein.
But when the stakes are raised, as they have been by recent scandals, such jokes turn deadly serious. The fringes of the pundit set have already been intimating that these tainted-food incidents are deliberate. In May, the conservative news organ WorldNetDaily.com asked, "Is China Trying to Poison Americans and Their Pets?" The nativist drumbeat has only pounded louder ever since, suggesting that China has been waging a secret biowarfare campaign to destroy the United States from deep, deep within -- planting WMDs in the Wal-Mart cart, if you will.
More troubling still, yellow-peril imagery has been oozing from the extreme margins into the mainstream. Recently, the Utah-based health food company Food for Health International even became the first to take this "China equals menace" meme to market, instituting a new label and ad campaign promoting its products as "China-Free." There's talk about calling the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing the B.Y.O. Olympics...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Just another example of the left siding with that which is evil, wrong, and failed,
because of their fear of (rightfully) discriminating against dangerous behavior.
Judging by this stupid article, I'd say the Washington Post seems to be full of it.
As usual!
Geezus, Yang, project much?
Good old left wing. These are the people who rail against big business, then turn around and defend big contamination from China. HA!
Bourdain really needs to stick to area of expertise, which is *not* social science. By his standard, the Chinese are the biggest racists in the world. The average Chinese thinks non-Chinese food is slop.
“Anthony Bourdian is a prize jackass” Amen. He is a pompass ass. I hope he gets a bad 1000 Year Old Egg and chokes on it.
MMMM... racism. Tastes like ... melamine.
Well, hey, if a “gustatory adventurer” thinks it’s so, then I’m convinced it’s true.
Okay, okay. So you CAN drink the water in Mexico. Knock yourself out.
This article reads like a ChiCom “plant”.
That’s what I thought. I was wondering why this “Chinese American” is siding with the communist Chinese in their efforts to poison us. Seems to me like he identifies with the China part of his heritage rather than the American part.
When facts fail you -- assert racism. Anything that Anthony Bourdain says is suspect in the first place, he is an open borders whining liberal.
Wrong.
Fear of dirt is often indistinguishable from the fear of disease and tainted food.
Idiot.
Should have been a barf alert self ping.
Racism against Chinese? Rubbish. Except for the hard core commies they’re good people. And it’s a shame that Truman literally gave China to Mao (can we impeach a dead POTUS?)
As if MSG wasn’t already bad enough.
Frankly as I see it, it is not a racism issue per say but a protectionist issue. All of the recent media “pushes” have been designed to form public opinion in support of protectionist policies. In spite of FR’s dislike for the “mainstream media”, people are still inexplicably rely on it wholesale and are extremely malleable to media manipulation. As Kennedy said the enemy of truth is not lie, but myth, and in this case omission. In light of the surging trade deficit with China, certain members of Congress are looking for public support to put in place laws limiting Chinese imports, what better way than to stoke public furor regarding the safety of Chinese products.
Despite the fact that imports from India and Mexico are even more unsafe, China continues to hog the media spotlight. Part of the answer for this is because of the “yellow peril” phenomenon, but mostly its because of incompetent journalists’ mentality of monkey see, monkey do.
People have no doubts about the excellent quality that the Japanese put in to all the products they manufacture and export.
IT’S NOT THE RACISM, STUPID.
Very similar to the “Flying Mullahs” -
play upon the lefts’ inherent phobia of appearing “intolerant/judgemental/discriminatory”
in order to advance the attack on America.
He just tried the chicken feet stewed in antibiotics.
So now we’re racists if we drop dead from antifreeze in the soup.
And this guy is here to tell us that it is not? Fine...you eat it then.
Recognizing the truth that bad food can come from bad cultures (ie. cultures where the majority of people are lacking in basic hygene) is not racist, it is just common sense, something these tyeps of liberal/apologist/leftists seem to be sorely lacking in.
Maybe we should have a funeral for the words racism and racist. They are so misused as to be useless to sane people.
Wash Post - continuing the tradition of speaking power to truth....
Of course, serious problems exist in China's massive food-export complex, which is the source of the vast bulk of additives such as xanthan gum and ascorbic acid, as well as 12 percent of the world's fruit and vegetables and about half of the global supply of farm-raised fish. But many of these problems have stemmed from China's embrace of capitalist ethics, unrestrained by the government oversight present in more established industrial economies.
So in other words, Chinese food quality does suck and is bad for you but it's because they've gone capitalist!!!
Ya gotta love it.
Hey Jeff Yang, take a slow leaky boat to China.
Hey I like Anthony Bourdian!
And yes...he is a pompass ass. But since he likes to make fun of OVERRATED POMPASS ASS Emeril Lagasse, as well as can cuss a blue streak better than anybody I know (even me!)...I like him.
What utter BS. The Chinese themselves are running an anti spitting campaign prior to their Olympic Games.
Sorry, it should have been a barf alert, and on so many levels...
Did you ever see the show The Restaurant? It was a the story of this “chef” that gets a ton of money to open a place in NYC. The place implodes. Its great viewing.
Anthony Bourdain comes in and rips the food, the place and the service. Then the owner comes over and he is sweet as sugar to him and never says, “Dude, your food stinks!”
The author of this tripe should be forced to dine on nothing but chinese takeout for a month and use chinese knock-off toothpaste. I guess he missed the execution of the former head of China’s FDA.
Did you see his show on the Mexican border? It was a half-hour advertisement for illegal alien kitchen help, and how mean we are to those poor illegals. I watch his shows if he is going somewhere that might actually have decent food. Otherwise he is too big of a smirking, posturing jerk to watch on a regular basis. Just because someone has been known to ride a motorcycle does not make them an admirable person.
We “blue eyed devils” just don’t get it. Any criticism of any group other than “whites” is racist, even if the criticism is inarguably valid.
Then how come Chinese restaurants are so popular?
This is just plain poppycock! My husband, a horticulturalist, has me read all labels of all canned foods to see where the food is grown. We avoid China, India and Mexico because of their dirty agriculural practices. Read anything about the water in China lately? India
I have a good friend here from Beijing. She is as personally clean as anyone I know—certainly her house is a a lot cleaner than mine! She and her husband prefer shopping at Asian markets and go out of their way to find food from China. Once I went with them to an Asian grocery store in Philadelphia. I was stunned at the filth. The floors looked like they’d never been mopped. I saw a lot of “fresh food” that you take from the bins with tongs. The tongs were on the floor and people were just picking them up, plunging them into the food that they wanted and put them back on the bins. But because they were unattached, they kept falling. I really felt sick after leaving there. My friends just seemed not to notice—nationalist pride comes before everything else.
And Chinese are NOT capable of being racist in their view of all that is non-Chinese? Ha!
Yea...like Chinese restaurants serving up the neighborhood dogs and cats (tastes like chicken).
This ain't no urban legend. It happens. It happened in my neighborhood. The health inspector walked in and found the pet carcass in process of being carved up. Shut the place down.
Nope...but I read Kitchen Confidential. Yes...he loves illegals. He hired them for his kitchen help (back when he actually worked in kitchens). He said he could get a lot more work out of them then he could “spoiled white kids”. I’m not condoning this mind you. I’m simply saying I’m aware of where he stands on the issue...and I still like him.
No, you’re a racist if you DON’T drop dead from the antifreeze in the soup.
Ask the Dalai Lama.
China’s food problem is caused by capitalism, which fosters corruption. China’s food regulations though not extensive as the US FDA were not even followed by the merchants. Reason that many Chinese regulators are hesitant to enforce these existing rules is because many of these businesses form partnerships with influential local Communist Party officials or are owned by relatives of powerful local Party officials. Enforce the regulations, the official may be a hero that day, but down the road, the businessmen’s relatives will have their revenge on the official’s career. In a society where good jobs have many applicants, many officials hesitate to cause problems that will jeopardize their own family’s livelihood. The Chinese consumer have been living with this problem and were unable to do anything about it, until the crisis exploded. Now the officials in Bejing fearing the loss of business are starting to react.
If you get a liberal sounding this claptrap in your vicinity, remind them that the same “racist” Americans who defeated the shamnesty bill seem to have zero problem with South American produce which is quite clean and free of toxic crap.
When I lived in Mexico, I was very careful about where I shopped. There are some good chain stores there such a Commercial Mexicana and Gigante that usually maintain standards of cleanliness equal to those of American grocery stores. There are also some markets where buying and eating what they sell is a recipe for disaster. The Mexican products I buy on a regular basis here are their mangos and limes, which are wonderful. Of course you have to wash them like anything else, and squirt them with that fruit and vegetable disinfectant, but I do that with American grown produce, too. Tree fruit that has to be peeled to be consumed is safer than, say, strawberries or lettuce. I am always ambivalent about the tomatoes. Their plum tomatoes are tasty, but .....
Capitalism no more fosters corruption than does communism.
Payoffs, stealing, bribes and kickbacks are favorite pastimes of communist party hacks.
"We are VERY concerned that our packaging and labelling error killed 100 Panamanian citizens and that our packaging and labelling error killed hundreds of America's pet dogs. ...... Best regards, The People's Republic of China."
There! It's all better now. Buy Chinese products. Put them in your mouth and swallow. Don't worry. Be happy.
Personal Experience: I was out from work 90 days, in the hospital three weeks, still cannot eat as I did prior to Feb. 5, 1976 when I ate lunch aboard a ME vessel I was tending in the LA harbor as part of my job as shoreside operations Maintenance and Repair. Long story, but the point is the freshly purveyed foodstuffs I observed loaded, helped to load to the vessels ships stores, later prepared for lunch were contaminated during preparation by an Arab Galley crewmember with dirty hands. The Containership line had to remove the entire crew in Tokyo upon arrival there and replace with a new crew flown in from the ME.
I take foodstuff contamination very seriously, and recommend everybody do so. The results are Hell on Earth, or death.
Mr. Yang, what I am reading from you is a hit piece written by someone with a giant chip on his shoulder. Your argument is classic liberalism. Race baiting to end discussion. The obvious is staring everyone in the face, namely the gross uncleanliness and contamination of Chinese-sourced food due to China’s indifference and greed, perhaps criminally so. Yet you use this as an opportunity to put your racism on public display, while claiming reality is its opposite. You fooled nobody. Try again, chump.
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