Twitter Melts Down Over David Brooks Column Calling Italian Sandwiches Insensitive
David Brooks, the Internet’s favorite punching bag over at the New York Times opinion pages, wrote a column on Tuesday in which he appears to imply that Italian sandwiches are insensitive to people with no college education.
In an op-ed entitled “How We Are Ruining America,” Brooks describes the increasingly insulated and entrenched elitist class in the United States.
It’s a fairly interesting column, but one paragraph stands out, in which Brooks tells a story about taking a high-school educated friend to “a gourmet sandwich shop” — only to realize, to his horror, that the friend was made uncomfortable by the fancy meats on display.
“I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican,” Brooks writes.
Here is the passage, in all its glory:
Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.
The paragraph — insinuating that Italian sandwiches overwhelmed Brooks’ high-school educated friend so much that he had to whisk her away to a Mexican restaurant — set Twitter alight Tuesday morning, with jokes flooding in and many calling Brooks’ story condescending, if not outright bizarre:
this is an utterly insane graf from david brooks’s latest column https://t.co/Q1WOnGat9P pic.twitter.com/qK8zAVkOVu
— Max Read (@max_read) July 11, 2017
David Brooks proudly follows the oldest tradition of all newspaper columnists without a beat: thinking of an idea an hour before deadline
— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) July 11, 2017
me: nothing could knock this donald jr. revelation out of the news cycle
david brooks: hold my sandwich
— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) July 11, 2017
Everyone’s talking about how rude David Brooks was to his friend, but obviously she’s not the sort of person who reads The New York Times.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) July 11, 2017
It is hard to distinguish yourself as a condescending ass these days, cuz we’re overrun, but David Brooks has always been an overachiever.
— Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman) July 11, 2017
I’m starting to think there are reasons why no one wants to go out to dinner with David Brooks. https://t.co/fyGksU0rfr
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017
I had to take my friend to the restaurant where they just serve deep-fried clumps of hamburger helper on a stick
— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) July 11, 2017
Me: *takes friend to sandwich shop*
Friend: *not sure what to order*
Me: Ah, you’re too stupid for sandwiches, we’ll go somewhere else— Pixelated Boat (@pixelatedboat) July 11, 2017
I took David Brooks out for banh mi once but staring at the baguettes he wept for the fate of the West and we so we drank paint instead.
— Patrick Blanchfield (@PatBlanchfield) July 11, 2017
What’s so funny about this David Brooks column..I didn’t go to college…and all my friends always make fun of me for being elitist re food https://t.co/wNcqupY3U6
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) July 11, 2017
[image via screengrab]
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