Slate, the Amateur Online Webzine Specializing in Hit-Trolling and Outrage-Fishing: First of a Series

Well, it looks like the Washington Post was just so many chains holding back the Mighty Joe Young that is Slate. Because they're now parading their naked id in public, in all its stupid, ridiculous, laughable, sub-retarded inglory.

We have been speculating that Slate is pursuing a deliberate strategy of posting risible blogposts in order to get linked by the right (and also generate tons of traffic from reader comments -- as even their liberal readers are a bit scandalized at the stupidity flowing forth from David Plotz' amateur webzine now).

Today, this theory is all but confirmed. Today is a Banner Day for Slate, and that banner reads, "A somewhat dumber version of Salon." There are at least three blogposts (I will not say "articles") of such profound stupidity as to announce themselves as Desperate Cries for Help.

Here now a recap of the first scandalously dumb output pumped out by the Slate Brain Trust today.

Provocative Title:

"No, Your Favorite Food Is Not Like Crack

So stop saying that."

Great title. It starts us off on that hectoring, judgy tone that liberals so love.

Writer: L.V. Anderson, last seen arguing that an AP story about a woman who fell to her death while smoking a cigarette on a date was slut-shaming the victim.

Thesis: To say food is "like crack" is "callously classist," which is what people say when they want to say "racist" but suddenly realize that attributing crack addiction to minority races is itself racist. So they change it to "classist," but you know what the first draft said. Wink. ;)

In addition, to speak of food as "like crack" demonstrates a profound indifference to the plight of crackheads. No really. But we'll get to that.

Crescendo of Stupid: The following passages seem primarily designed to induce people to say, "Why that's so obnoxiously stupid I have to link this!"

Saying that a food is “like crack”—or doing away with the “like” and using “crack” as an awkward adjective—is intended to be an edgy way of emphasizing how instantly gratifying it is, and how difficult it is to stop eating it once it’s in front of you. Unfortunately, all it really does is demonstrate how out of touch and callously classist foodie culture has become.

Is a steak sandwich bad for your health? Absolutely. Does caramel ice cream taste so good that it induces cravings in some people? You bet. Do sweet, fatty foods like Crack Pie light up the same pleasure centers of the brain that are activated by addictive drugs? Sure—in rats, at least. And yet food is not like crack in several significant ways.

lolwut?

None of the foods touted on menus as being like crack is illegal. None of them produces an intense, euphoric, consciousness-altering high when you eat it. None of them induces paranoia, psychosis, erratic behavior, or seizures when you consume too much of it over the course of a few days. None of them scars your lungs, making it difficult to breathe, if you make a habit of eating them over the long term. And none of these foods is so physically addictive that it has the potential to ruin your health, finances, and relationships.

Mm, that's interesting.

No, I mean it's interesting, the things you find interesting. It's like thinking about what your dog thinks about. Is it all just like Tennis Ball, Food, Keys, Leash, and Groin?

Yes, I understand that comparing food to crack is supposed to be hyperbolically absurd

Do you? Do you really understand that?

Because it sounds like you grasp the dictionary meaning of the individual words, but fail to understand the actual import of that the assembled words are intended to conjure in your mind.

...

The problem with the joke is that crack addiction isn’t funny. The rise of crack cocaine’s availability—and the brutal, racist war on drugs that ensued—tore inner-city communities apart in the 1980s and 1990s. And although sales of the drug aren’t what they once were, gang violence associated with crack trafficking continues to make some urban neighborhoods nightmarishly unlivable. There is no quicker way to display your ignorance of and indifference to the misery of poverty in America than to say that your favorite dessert is “like crack.”

We're still talking about saying "this key lime pie is like crack," right? Because for like five minutes there all of a sudden we were in New Jack City with Mario Van Peebles and Judd Nelson.

...

These foodies never consider the fact that crack abuse is a devastating problem for some people, because they never have to.

"These Foodies."

That's virtually racist itself.

Winking Self-Awareness? Is Slate just writing these stupid articles to get Outrage-Clicks? And are they so ashamed at what they're doing that they have to broadcast that's what they're doing, the way directors insert camp into films they believe are beneath them in order to signal "I don't like this movie either"?

I detect in this particular article a sly wink to the reader, a signal that the writer does not believe this stupid shit she's writing.

Here is the passage that actually sort of says "This is a joke and I know it."

How many people who smirk when they order a piece of Crack Pie have ever met anyone who smokes crack, let alone smoked it themselves?

Why do I say that's a Sly Wink? Because... That right there is a joke from The Office, and one of the only truly great jokes from the last several (very mediocre years) of the show.

Watch:

So you tell me.

Is Slate now accepting pitches from Ryan from The Office?

posted by Ace at 01:52 PM

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