Alice Martins/Associated Press
A Syrian refugee prepares a meal for her family in their tent in Kawergosk refugee camp in northern Iraq.
I take my hat off to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their superb investigative coverage of Trump’s self-immolation. However …
There is another aspect of the Times that demonstrates just how out of touch the Paper of Record is with the way most people actually live—its fawning over elite consumption and food.
The Times Food section yesterday included a three-page photo spread called “The World at Dinner.” In a stab at multiculturalism, the feature displayed happy families, with children and parents around dining room tables, in 18 cities from Amsterdam to KwaZulu-Natal.
And all of them were unmistakably well-off—even in poverty-ridden Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where “oranges and limes from the yard were used to marinate the meat and crab” at dinner with the Charles family. Yum.
Do most Haitians eat like this? Does most of the world?
The feature engendered the warm perception that people the world over are just like well-off Times readers. Only the cuisine is different.
Except they’re not. Three out of four of the world’s people live in poverty, according to the U.N.
So how about a Times food spread on how people in countries with widespread starvation dine? Or families in refugee camps?
Even in America, far too many families don’t sit down to eat together at all, because one parent, or maybe two, are juggling jobs and can’t be in the same place at the same time for dinner.
My family, who were lucky enough to eat dinner in the same place at the same time, once hosted a scholarship student in our home for a semester. He was astonished that we all sat down together for meals. In his family, it never happened.
Maybe turn the Food section over to Nick Kristof for a day.
