Bruni

Every time I read a piece by Bruni, I can’t help but think he would have been the perfect writer for late 19th century New York. Dinner at Delmonico’s that cost three times the yearly wage of an average New Yorker, rococo food preparations every night, incredibly expensive alcohol, long fabulous trips to Europe, and complete indifference to the plight of the poor around him.

I don’t write this to unnecessarily slag on the guy. I liked his writing as a food critic and while I think he’s pointless as an op-ed writer, he’s not evil. But ever since the fall when the Times would feature stories about Occupy Wall Street and Bruni articles about eating $200 meals mere blocks away, I can’t read him without thinking he is just totally clueless about the world around him. In this piece on Lisbon, his recognizes that Portugal is in financial trouble, but that’s just an advantage, because now he can spend more of his budget on food.

….I should note that more than anything, this was probably brought on by his Twitter feed. In the fall, I knew a lot of people (and followed others) who were part of the Occupy movement. They were getting arrested by the cops at the same time that Bruni was tweeting about eating over the top meals. I started replying to him, noting that he was truly eating the food of the 1%, but of course he didn’t respond.