A perk of being a writer is that it often leads to new friendships with interesting and inspirational people. Adam Linn, a blind film director, screenwriter and actor is one of them. (I have a story about Adam appearing in the next issue of MovieMaker Magazine.)
Adam emailed me this morning to express his disgust at a thoughtless article which appeared in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about a blind or partially-sighted applicant for a chef’s job at a city restaurant. The article is one of 40 essays which appear in a new book by Bloomsbury called Don’t Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World’s Greatest Chefs. It was written by Gabrielle Hamilton the chef and owner of Prune in the East Village. I don’t doubt Ms. Hamilton’s sincerity. But I do think she could have been better advised by Bloomsbury about her tone and choice of words.
The book’s blurb states:
A hilarious and heartening collection of kitchen disasters.
In this raucous new collection, over forty of the world’s greatest chefs relate outrageous true tales from their kitchens. From hiring a blind line cook to flooding the room with meringue to being terrorized by a French owl, these behind-the-scenes accounts are as wildly entertaining as they are revealing. A delicious reminder that even the chefs we most admire aren’t always perfect, Don’t Try This at Home is a must-have for anyone who loves food or is fascinated by those who masterfully prepare it.
I’ll let you be the judge. The full article is here. Here are a few extracts:
The first thing I noticed when he arrived was that he was blind. His eyes wandered around in their sockets like tropical fish in the aquarium of a cheap hotel lobby.
I showed him our menu. He held it up to his face as if to breathe in its written contents, to discover by inhaling what it said in plain print. I felt more certain than ever when I observed this that he was blind, but naturally doubted myself because obviously the guy had worked in restaurants, something that - though we may joke - really can’t and shouldn’t be done.
When he arrived for his trail I took him around on an introductory tour of the prep area and the walk-in and the hot line. At each station, he bent over and put his forehead against everything I showed him. It was fascinating at first - and later, heartbreaking - to note the angle at which he scrutinized each item in the refrigerator.
We set him up in the basement prep area with a cutting board and a menial task that wouldn’t matter if he messed it up: picking parsley. This took him most of the afternoon, and it was painful to watch him bent in half, killing his back in order to have his untethered eyes close up to the cutting board.
I never did find out what he was doing. I allowed him to finish out the whole trail, and when he had changed his clothes, I encouraged him to sit at the bar and have something to eat, which he did. And as he was leaving, I said I would call him the next day, which I did. I told him that I was looking for someone with a little more power, a bit more of a heavy hitter, but that I would keep him in mind if a position more aligned with his skills became available.
This, remarkably, he seemed to see coming.
Here is Adam’s letter to the editor at the New York Times:
To The Editor,
It is difficult for me to express the level of disappointment I felt in the Times for printing Gabrielle Hamilton’s supremely offensive essay, “Eat, Memory: Line of Sight” in Sunday’s magazine section.
I am a blind filmmaker. I would be hard pressed to create a depiction of someone as disrespectful as Ms. Hamilton does here in describing a man in search of a job at her restaurant, “The first thing I noticed when he arrived was that he was blind. His eyes wandered around in their sockets like tropical fish in the aquarium of a cheap hotel lobby.”
To allow Ms. Hamilton’s self-aggrandizing callousness in your paper is tantamount to printing blatantly racist comments. If Ms. Hamilton had chosen to belittle the appearance of any other minority group in the promotion of her book I sincerely doubt you would have seen fit to print it.
I have many accomplished blind friends including Jay Wolf, a celebrated barbecue chef in Texas and another, Peter Mikochik, who single handedly built an addition on his Shelter Island home.
Ms. Hamilton also adds, “I thought maybe I was an ignorant jerk who didn’t realize how far the blind had come.”
This is the one instance in which Ms. Hamilton manages to come close to the truth with her pompous yet amateur prose.
Adam Linn
UPDATE: Check out the American Foundation for the Blind blog
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Oh hell, I had always wanted to try “Prune” but now that Ms. Hamilton has displayed herself to be such an insipid and insensitive person, it will be impossible for me to go there. This is so obviously offensive I am deeply surprised that several editors failed to catch this. But it seems that such attitudes towards those who are physically different are pervasive. I had an awful time with Ann Althouse at her blog as she and most of her readers panned the Alison Lapper sculpture, mostly because of the “shocking” imagery of a disabled and pregant woman. Now, I don’t mind a bit of ignorance as I have demonstrated in my life more than a bit of ignorance in my contact with those who are different from myself. But Hamilton was not just ignorant, she was downright mean. Imagine if the piece had been about a Mexican immigrant with limited English skills sitting in the basement peeling parsely? Of course, we would all be horrified, and the piece would never have been published.
As an article in a newspaper it is certainly in very poor taste. But if it is just quoting an excerpt from a book, then I suppose there are plenty of offensive books quoted in newspaper articles. Still, can you imagine if the author chose any other minority group to bash? “The first thing I noticed when he arrived was that he was black” would not have gone over well.
Keep in mind that, at one point, it was okay to make fun of blind people. The old cartoon, Mr. Magoo, did an excellent job at that. And while the cartoon was created during a very non-PC time, in 1997 it was remade into a Disney feature film of the same name, starring Leslie Neilsen. I guess if Disney thinks it’s alright to make fun of blind people, it must be kosher.
And it’s still okay to make fat jokes, but why?
I actually love non-p.c. humor. I adore Sarah Silverman, who I think makes fun of p.c. AND racism all in the same breath. I also love many jokes against the disabled - I think the cartoon “Family Guy” does a pretty good job at making fun of everyone, including the over the top heroic paraplegic police officer neighbor. I’ve actually never seen Mr. Magoo, so I’m not sure what to say about that.
However, I don’t think Hamilton is making fun of bigotry or is making any sort of statement regarding the policing of p.c. values. I think instead, she is exposing her own bigotry and meanness towards a visually impaired person.
Big Apple Blog Festival - October 3, 2005
Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week’s posts by NYC bloggers. The Kitchen Review has a funny post … “Corporate Potluck” … with a link to “one of the greatest bad cookbooks ever -…
Hello, just came across your post on Gabrielle Hamilton’s offensive article from the NYT Magazine — what an insidious piece of writing. At the American Foundation for the Blind, where I work, we have been talking a lot the article on our blog (www.afb.org/blog). Last Monday, our president wrote a post entitled “New York Times Magazine Food Section Serves Up Bigotry for Breakfast” — which has caused a flurry of comments on the site. Thought you and your friend Adam may want to check it out. Everyone here is curious to see the letters section in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine… Thanks again for the post. Adrianna
Hi. Just came across your website through perusing www.afb.org/blog . I, too, read Ms Hamilton’s article and was equally appalled. How could such a reputable magazine publish an article of this low quality? In my opinion this is just plain unacceptable. Regarding the comment about Mr. Magoo, I have this to say. I am too young to have ever watched an episode of Mr. Magoo. However, I know that there are visually-impaired people who themselves have criticized Mr. Magoo for “attacking the blindness community.” I have to wonder how a group of visually impaired people could be offended so much by something which was only meant for entertainment purposes, and which presumably did not include any derogatory statements toward visually impaired people. I will save the rest of my rant about this particular blindness organization for another time.
I’m guessing most of the people posting comments from their moral high horse read only your excerpt, and not the full article. I can safely assume this, because the overall tone of Hamilton’s piece is far from the mocking-the-afflicted tone you attempt to portray. But then, some people are always looking for someone they can feel morally superior to.