Bruni and Beyond: NYC Reviewing (2007)

[oakapple]

Since I was one of two (I think H. was the other) who didn't know the Times critic was gay, nor did/do I care, how do so many people know what other people's sexual orientation is?

I believe it was mentioned upthread: a few years ago, NY Mag ran a story about prominent NYC gays, and Bruni (then a political reporter) made the list. Obviously not everyone read that story, but at that point you could say it became common knowledge.

Why was that list made? Well, why do people make any type of list?

Is there some web site that lists these things? And most importantly, why do people care what other people do in their bedrooms?

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To talk and write about sex is human nature.

[Sneakeater]

And rich, when you ask who cares, it's all the people who keep carping about Bruni's sexual orientation, or make cracks about interior decorators, or (most recently) accuse him of being a "woman-hater." I can't imagine why it has to come up.

Edited May 10, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)

[JohnL]

Again, It is funny that the issue never came up with say Craig Claiborne!

Maybe there would be no cracks about Bruni if he were above reproach as an expert on food and restaurants.

[Sneakeater]

I agree. But that's why I keep saying that all this subsidiary carping just obscures the fundamental criticism to which Bruni is subject.

[oakapple]

Again, It is funny that the issue never came up with say Craig Claiborne!

Maybe there would be no cracks about Bruni if he were above reproach as an expert on food and restaurants.

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Well, in Claiborne's days, attitudes about being openly gay were a lot different.

Bruni clearly feels he is at liberty to toy with the classic review format, particularly when he doesn't have much to say about the restaurant itself. He has written three reviews (Sascha, Waverley Inn, Robert's) that were more about his own cleverness than the restaurants. In only one of the three was his sexuality openly mentioned. But I couldn't imagine Grimes, Reichl, Miller, Sheraton, or Claiborne writing any of them. They just wrote restaurant reviews.

I could conceive of a food critic who would bring a "gay sensibility" to every review. I just don't think Frank Bruni is that critic, since he's done it in only one of about 150 reviews so far. Mimi Sheraton pretty obviously imparted a Jewish sensibility when she reviewed Jewish restaurants (and in those days, there were Jewish restaurants worth reviewing). But the other 99% of the time, she was just a food critic who happened to be Jewish.

I think it's more sensible to either approve or disapprove of the Sascha-Waverley-Robert's type of review as a group, than to heap disapprobation on the Robert's view alone.

Edited May 10, 2007 by oakapple (log)

[Sneakeater]

Except that to me, two of them were insulting failures, and one worked.

[rich]

And rich, when you ask who cares, it's all the people who keep carping about Bruni's sexual orientation, or make cracks about interior decorators, or (most recently) accuse him of being a "woman-hater."  I can't imagine why it has to come up.

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Possibly, but I know male people who are interior decorators and/or women haters who are straight.

[Sneakeater]

I know white people who eat watermelons, too -- most of the ones I know, actually -- but a stereotype is a stereotype and a slur is a slur.

[JohnL]

Again, It is funny that the issue never came up with say Craig Claiborne!

Maybe there would be no cracks about Bruni if he were above reproach as an expert on food and restaurants.

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Well, in Claiborne's days, attitudes about being openly gay were a lot different.

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Interestingly, Claiborne was openly gay at the time.

He made no secret of it. It was just never an issue in his reviews

because he did not interject it into them.

Even if he did, his credentials as a serious food and restaurant critic were well established.

[rich]

I know white people who eat watermelons, too -- most of the ones I know, actually -- but a stereotype is a stereotype and a slur is a slur.

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Again, possibly. I don't know anything about the women-hating angle, but the interior decorating part is fair and may have nothing to do with him being gay. He, more than any critic I recall, places a very strong emphasis on decor (lighting, music, colors, bathrooms to name a few) and ambiance. Even to the point of complaining when someone knocked over a lamp (Bouley review).

So if someone said he should have been an interior decorator, can't they mean it as a non-sexual criticism?

Does everything need to have a sexual overtone? I was under the impression most people got over that while in high school.

[Sneakeater]

We're not still in high school?

[rich]

We're not still in high school?

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Would you like my pin?

[Nathan]

A critic may operate from a very personal standpoint imbuing his or her criticism and critical criteria with a very personal views unrelated to his or her knowledge and experience with the subject.

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This is true, banal and irrelevant.

There is evidence that Bruni does this with Italian food and informal v. formal dining. I absolutely agree. Where you went off the reservation is with some absurd idea that because Bruni is gay, therefore his restaurant criticism, in the aggregate, somehow reflects his sexual orientation. You have neither presented evidence that Bruni's criticism reflects his orientation or presented a causal mechanism. Instead, you have merely assumed that who someone sleeps with automatically affects how they write about food. This is absurd. I noted, that for aesthetic reasons, this is conceivably possible, albeit highly unlikely.

so, I ask you, which of Bruni's known biases (against formal dining, for Italian food, for Asian food) reflects him being gay..and which different biases would he have if he were straight?

(btw, if his orientation were affecting his restaurant appreciation, shouldn't he have downgraded Robert's?)

you seem to have the following train of thought:

1. human beings are inherently biased. (true)

2. some human beings are affected by their biases more than others (true)

3. a man who sleeps with men automatically has different biases about all aspects of life from those of straight men (for example, he is more likely to be a Mets fan). (unproven)

4. therefore, Bruni writes differently about food than if he were straight (unproven, foundering on #3).

[Nathan]

My point re: Bruni is that is treading on thin ice with thinly veiled allusions to his sexuality (and that of his friends) especially when his credibility as a basic food and restaurant critic is so widely in question.

No one really cares what a person's sexual identity is once their credentials are established in the area of their supposed expertise.

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I get you...because Bruni is gay he carries a greater credibility burden than if he were straight.

can we leave the 1950's?

[Nathan]

William Grimes was famously lambasted when he made an explicit reference (more explicit than Bruni's Robert's review -- where some people really didn't get it) to his heterosexuality in this review:

http://events.nytimes.com/mem/nycreview.ht...260&oref=slogin

[JohnL]

My point re: Bruni is that is treading on thin ice with thinly veiled allusions to his sexuality (and that of his friends) especially when his credibility as a basic food and restaurant critic is so widely in question.

No one really cares what a person's sexual identity is once their credentials are established in the area of their supposed expertise.

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I get you...because Bruni is gay he carries a greater credibility burden than if he were straight.

can we leave the 1950's?

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nathan

You never cease to amaze me!

For the record:

That is in no way what I said or mean. If you notice my comments about Craig Claiborne whom I respect and admire greatly. Bruni's problem is he is not being taken seriously by a large chunk of his audience as a food and restaurant critic. His sexual orientation became an issue only after he introduced it. (in fact, arguable hung a review on it).

My point is that if he were well respected as a critic no one (well almost no one) would be having any issue with said orientation at all.

It is pretty clear that most people do not believe that gender or sexual preference has anything whatsoever to do with one's abilities as a critic or a writer.

I don't!

Actually, I am ready (and have been for some time) to move on. Until that is, Bruni raises the issue again.

(and maybe even then....)

[oakapple]

William Grimes was famously lambasted when he made an explicit reference (more explicit than Bruni's Robert's review -- where some people really didn't get it) to his heterosexuality in this review:

http://events.nytimes.com/mem/nycreview.ht...260&oref=slogin

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Grimes wrote:

My wife, hope fading fast, ordered a glass of Champagne. She got an execrable sparkling wine.

He was lambasted for that???

[Nathan]

Bruni's problem is he is not being taken seriously by a large chunk of his audience as a food and restaurant critic. His sexual orientation became an issue only after he introduced it. (in fact, arguable hung a review on it).

My point is that if he were well respected as a critic no one (well almost no one) would be having any issue with said orientation at all.

It is pretty clear that most people do not believe that gender or sexual preference has anything whatsoever to do with one's abilities as a critic or a writer.

I don't!

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1. what you seem incapable of comprehending is that it is unclear to the rest of us why his credibility as a critic has anything to do with whether his sexual orientation is "an issue"....what difference does it make whether he is the best food reviewer on the planet or the worst? how do either of those statuses make his orientation an issue?

assume for a moment that Sneakeater is a shitty food writer (sorry, Sneak!), does the fact that he mentions his heterosexuality on occasion make it an issue because of his (hypothetical) shitty food writing? (he writes about food quite well btw).

you're still insisting on different rules if someone is gay.

2. no one here has ever said that someone's gender or sexual preference never affects their writing or criticism. no one ever said that. what I called you on in your initial post was your implicit reference to critical theory to make the absurd claim that someone's sexual orientation (well, you didn't say this applied to us breeders) inevitably affects all aspects of their writing no matter what they write about. as I said before, there are gay writers and there are writers who happen to be gay. and there's a difference (and a continuum in between).

Edited May 10, 2007 by Nathan (log)

[Nathan]

William Grimes was famously lambasted when he made an explicit reference (more explicit than Bruni's Robert's review -- where some people really didn't get it) to his heterosexuality in this review:

http://events.nytimes.com/mem/nycreview.ht...260&oref=slogin

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Grimes wrote:

My wife, hope fading fast, ordered a glass of Champagne. She got an execrable sparkling wine.

He was lambasted for that???

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that was satire (my statement that is).

(in other words, your orientation is only an issue if you're gay...it's perfectly ok to reference it if you're straight)

Edited May 10, 2007 by Nathan (log)

[oakapple]

My wife, hope fading fast, ordered a glass of Champagne. She got an execrable sparkling wine.

He was lambasted for that???

←

that was satire (my statement that is).

(in other words, your orientation is only an issue if you're gay...it's perfectly ok to reference it if you're straight)

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In fairness, the two situations aren't quite comparable. Grimes didn't write a whole review around his heterosexuality. If you replace "My wife" and "She" with "My partner" and "He," and that's what Bruni wrote, then they would be comparable.

[slkinsey]

What I find interesting in the Grimes review to which Nathan linked is how much of that writing is focused on the food. It's striking, compared to what we're getting now. At a casual glance, I'd say that the writing is a little over half directly focused on the food and wine, and maybe 15% each on the service, decor/atmosphere and history of the restaurant/chef. This is in comparison to the Bruni reviews, which seem to give more space to scene/decor than anything else, with "Frank being clever" coming in at a close second and food somewhere at the bottom.

Edited May 10, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[Nathan]

My wife, hope fading fast, ordered a glass of Champagne. She got an execrable sparkling wine.

He was lambasted for that???

←

that was satire (my statement that is).

(in other words, your orientation is only an issue if you're gay...it's perfectly ok to reference it if you're straight)

←

In fairness, the two situations aren't quite comparable. Grimes didn't write a whole review around his heterosexuality. If you replace "My wife" and "She" with "My partner" and "He," and that's what Bruni wrote, then they would be comparable.

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like I said, Grimes' statement is explicit in a way the Bruni statement is not (witness the feminist blogs calling out Bruni for his patriarchal sexism)...but sure, Grimes never used heterosexuality as a hook....it'd be hard to do so...well, if he had reviewed Roberts I'm sure he would have made some comments on the matter.

[oakapple]

like I said, Grimes' statement is explicit in a way the Bruni statement is not (witness the feminist blogs calling out Bruni for his patriarchal sexism)...

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This might be hair-splitting. I think Bruni's meaning was fairly evident to most readers—even to the feminists. They just didn't like the objectification of women (as they saw it), never mind that it was a gay guy doing it.

[JohnL]

Bruni's problem is he is not being taken seriously by a large chunk of his audience as a food and restaurant critic. His sexual orientation became an issue only after he introduced it. (in fact, arguable hung a review on it).

My point is that if he were well respected as a critic no one (well almost no one) would be having any issue with said orientation at all.

It is pretty clear that most people do not believe that gender or sexual preference has anything whatsoever to do with one's abilities as a critic or a writer.

I don't!

←

1. what you seem incapable of comprehending is that it is unclear to the rest of us why his credibility as a critic has anything to do with whether his sexual orientation is "an issue"....what difference does it make whether he is the best food reviewer on the planet or the worst? how do either of those statuses make his orientation an issue?

assume for a moment that Sneakeater is a shitty food writer (sorry, Sneak!), does the fact that he mentions his heterosexuality on occasion make it an issue because of his (hypothetical) shitty food writing? (he writes about food quite well btw).

you're still insisting on different rules if someone is gay.

2. no one here has ever said that someone's gender or sexual preference never affects their writing or criticism. no one ever said that. what I called you on in your initial post was your implicit reference to critical theory to make the absurd claim that someone's sexual orientation (well, you didn't say this applied to us breeders) inevitably affects all aspects of their writing no matter what they write about. as I said before, there are gay writers and there are writers who happen to be gay. and there's a difference (and a continuum in between).

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Now you are speaking for "the rest of us."

I agree with your astute conclusion that "there are gay writers and writers who happen to be gay."

also your even more astute observation that there is a "difference."

You are welcome to infer whatever you want to.

One final question.

If in one of his reports on the political scene covering government. Bruni declared "I am gay." or a liberal or a conservative." would someone be even remotely justified in reading that piece as well as ensuing pieces by Bruni wondering what role his being gay or liberal or conservative was playing in terms of the perspective being applied to the subject at hand?

Afterall what exactly would be one's point in making such an announcement in an arena where the announcement should have no bearing on anything?

Kinda like when someone opens by stating that "It's not about the money but...."

I'm sorry Nathan, I realize I must be driving you nuts!

I'm done making points. We really should move on. you will never agree with me, though as noted above, I agree with you so I guess we are in some sort of agreement here!

can we agree on that much?!

[JohnL]

Despite all the criticism leveled at Mr Bruni. I think it is important to note that he deserves a lot of respect for even attempting what he does. I certainly would not want to try putting my restaurant reviewing skills out there on the professional level.

I also believe that the standards that the Times set in the past are in no small part responsible for a lot of dissatisfaction with Bruni.

It may be, as noted here much earlier, that the Times is concerned less with a certain level of expertise and more in entertainment value as criteria as well as promoting the lifestyles in their reporter's backgrounds.

8 for one, am convinced that the real problem is not so much Bruni but rather the Times.

I will also say that the food section has been pretty interesting recently. (same for the food pieces in the Sunday Magazine). It ain't all bad.