WTF are CNN and Stanley Tucci thinking with their tone-deaf promos for Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.
It’s bad enough that Tucci seems an embarrassing substitute for Anthony Bourdain. But the only thing worse than making a mockery of people starving and even dying under Covid-19 restrictions is eating like a celebrated schmuck in the face of all that.
About 4 in 10 Americans report that they experienced food insecurity for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic. …
Yet perhaps more troubling than food banks’ expected shortages is the fact that many people who are grappling with hunger don’t know how to get the assistance they need. Nearly 4 out of 5 survey respondents say they struggled to find the support they needed.
(CNBC, November 19, 2020)
And those are Americans living in the richest country in the history of the world. I mean, the friggin’ National Guard is not just protecting the Capitol from Trump’s MAGA insurrectionists, its forces are deployed across the country handing out food to hungry Americans.
So just imagine the “food insecurity” of people living in poor countries in Africa, Asia, or in the “undiscovered” parts of Italy this latterday Marco Polo is apparently searching for. Frankly, the arrogance inherent in everything about this show should make you want to vomit every time Tucci opens his big mouth – whether to belch culinary and sommeliery soundbites or to gulp wine and gorge food most viewers would never be able to afford.
In fact, the arrogance is such that you’d be forgiven for thinking this show could only have been born of the kind of ignorance that creates so many on Fox News.
I get the notion of providing escapism from Covid restrictions. But food porn in a time of food insecurity is just showing bad taste. This should only happen on social media, where so-called influencers are too ignorant to know better and too narcissistic to care.
Meanwhile, everyone in the tourism industry (especially the owners of high-end restaurants) are watching haplessly as Covid-19 restrictions destroy it like a metastasizing cancer. And along comes Tucci pretending he has the cure: a food show on CNN that is tantamount to treating Covid-19 with Clorox bleach.
#BadTucciTableManners.
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Bourdain suicide… Trump insurrection… social media…
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