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Far be it from me to defend what Jon Stewart has demolished.
But
I would like to speak up on behalf of the fledgling New York mayor’s de
Blasphemy, now universally deemed his first mistake and possibly
grounds for impeachment: daintily carving up his
smoked-mozzarella-and-sausage pizza at Goodfellas in Staten Island with a
knife and fork.
I’m
not saying it’s right. I know it’s wrong. I’m just saying I do it, too.
I eat pizza with a knife and fork because I want only the gooey stuff
on top, not the crust.
(When
I first started in The Times’s Washington bureau, I soothed my nerves
by noshing on pizzas slathered with mashed potatoes, a dish that
required a spoon and bigger jeans.)
I
almost didn’t become a Times columnist because of a de Blasio-like faux
pas. When Arthur Sulzberger Jr. took me to breakfast to discuss the
possibility of a column, we were talking when he suddenly looked
dismayed. I thought it was my ZERO knowledge about NATO, but it wasn’t.
“Why,” he asked me, “are you eating your muffin with a knife and fork?”
I
thought I was being ladylike, which might have been de Blasio’s problem
as well. The photos looked way too ladylike for the 6-foot-5 mayor. It
seemed more like the prissy move of Warren Wilhelm Jr. of Cambridge —
his original name which he changed because of his estrangement from his
alcoholic father — than the paesano Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn.
Fearing
my future depended on it, I immediately clutched the muffin. But
switching to your hands midway, as the mayor also did, simply makes you
seem feckless as well as forkless; better to stick to your guns, and
tines.
David
Letterman’s Top Ten “Odd Habits of Mayor Bill de Blasio” on Monday
featured this one: “Refers to himself as ‘Her Majesty.’ ”
Indeed,
when F.D.R. served King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, their
first hot dogs on a 1939 visit to America, the confused queen ate hers
with a knife and fork, afraid to heed the president’s advice to pick it
up and relish it.
Pizza
can be hazardous to an administration. We all remember what happened
when a Clinton intern delivered a pie to the Oval Office during a
government shutdown.
But
de Blasio’s offense was so trivial that the most irritating part was
the labor-loving mayor’s labored explanation, grandly attributing it to
“my ancestral homeland.”
“I
have been in Italy a lot, and I picked up the habit for certain types
of pizza,” he told reporters. “So when you have a pizza like this, it
had a lot on it, I often start with a knife and fork but then I cross
over to the American approach and pick it up when I go farther into the
pizza. It’s a very complicated approach, but I like it.”
He
sounded like a parody of the self-serious New York liberal, convinced
he’s right about everything from the Sandinistas to stop-and-frisk to a
slice in Staten Island.
De
Blasio sounded alarmingly like Zosia Mamet’s mega-rambling character,
fellow Brooklynite Shoshanna Shapiro, on a recent “Girls,” when she
quizzes a quizzical Adam about his favorite utensil.
When
he says, “I guess a fork,” she lectures: “O.K., that is crazy. Like,
why would you want a cold metal prong stabbing you in the tongue when
instead you could have food delivered into your mouth on, like, a cool,
soft, pillowy cloud?”
The
new mayor should have just laughed it off. Then he might not have ended
up getting reduced to rubble by Jon Stewart, who asked “the champion of
the middle class”: “Were you elected the mayor of Italy? No! Look out
the window of the pizzeria. ... Do you see a Sistine Chapel or a Leaning
Tower of Pisa? No, you don’t! You see several junkyards and a tanning
salon.”
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Okay. Well, so, you say, yes, that's interesting and kind of humorous...but where's the connection to Moebius? Obviously Ms. Dowd is trying to be a bit funny, and to tie several things together and kind of observe the culture here...and to suggest too that, hey, there's nothing wrong with eating certain things with a knife and fork, why can't people make that choice for themselves? Right. Got it. But where's the Moebius tie-in?
But I think it's here. And what I'd tell Maureen Dowd is this--yes, interesting column. And sure, I see nothing wrong with eating usually-hand-held foods with a knife and fork. Know why? Because for some of us with physical differences--for example, for some of us with Moebius--it's kinda necessary!
Don't others of you with Moebius feel this way? And sometimes have to do this? I mean, for us it's hard to completely close our mouths. We kind of have to chew with our mouths open. Thus for certain messy foods--say, for example, a blueberry muffin--it can be better to eat it with a knife and fork. That way we don't spill! (at least, that's the case for me).
So to me, not only is it an okay lifestyle choice to eat hand-held foods with a knife and fork...not only is it silly in my view to be "dismayed" (as Ms. Dowd's boss once was) when somebody uses a knife and fork with a food that you usually wouldn't use on it...remember, folks: some of us with physical differences HAVE to eat certain things with utensils. It helps us eat cleaner and better. Diversity is not just about race, class, gender, or ethnicity. It's about so much more.
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