"The WHCD Viral ‘Salad Eater’ Is Wolf Blitzer’s Agent."

Wow, that's one of my favorite headlines ever.

In New York Magazine, here.

Context: "The man filmed casually eating a salad as everyone else ducked for cover after shots rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is speaking out. CAA Agent Michael Glantz told TMZ that he never felt unsafe at the event, and remained seated and eating because he wanted to see how law enforcement responded. 'Not every day you see something like that go down,' he said. Glantz was at the dinner because he is CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s agent."

I love that his name sounds like it means a quick look — glance — but he's the one who wanted to maintain a steady gaze. 

"It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through."

"There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality."

Writes Herman Melville, in Chapter 25 of "Moby-Dick."

"It is especially amusing to hear progressives, the principal creators of the watery Caesarism of today’s presidency, sorrowfully describing Trump’s ballroom..."

"... as discordant with the White House’s proper modesty. They should worry less about the president’s residential immodesty and more about his anti-constitutional immodesty.

Writes George Will, in "The choreographed fakery of American politics: East Wing edition/Trump’s residential immodesty is nothing compared with his anti-constitutional immodesty" (WaPo).

I wondered if anyone had written "watery Caesarism" before. It sounds like a bad salad. A real salad, not a word salad. Don't put the dressing on until you're about to eat it. Anyway, "watery Caesarism" did turn up on a few old web pages, but — are you surprised? — they're all written by George Will!

1992: "Trouble is, most presidents are mediocre.

"This is not the first midcentury, middle-America food craze to find new life online: Jell-O molds, 1970s-era desserts and 1970s-themed dinner parties..."

"... have all made unexpected comebacks. That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s.... For some, the box mixes and cans — triumphs of postwar prosperity — are a rosy portal to an imagined 'simpler time' of family dinners and easy living. 'That is nostalgia for America,' she said. 'That is our national comfort food.'"

From "Watergate Salad Makes a Comeback/The 1970s-era dish made with pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple and mini marshmallows has caught the curious eye of the TikTok generation" (NYT).

It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.

And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today." 

Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:

"Anything that you would put in a salad — romaine, spinach, kale, lemon, cucumber, an apple or a pear, sometimes fennel — I shove into my Vitamix..."

"... with a cup of water, lemon juice and a little bee pollen. You can drink it in about 30 seconds, but if I took everything out of that blender and put it in a bowl, it would take me an hour to eat it. That’s a lot of chewing."

Said Ann Patchett, quoted in "Ann Patchett Isn’t Parting With WordPerfect/The best-selling novelist refuses to yield when it comes to writing software, but she’s had a bit of a change of heart on Barnes & Noble" (NYT).

Is chewing too much trouble? Chewing vegetables is, maybe.

I just ran across that, but I'd already been thinking about vegetables. I was trying understand this sentence from the mid-1600s, a sentence that runs on so crazily that I didn't even try to ge to the end:

"If you lived through the 1980s there’s a decent chance that, at some point, you crossed paths with raspberry vinaigrette, pesto, and arugula."

"By the end of the decade, they had become part of the atmosphere hanging over American society, like a giant cloud of Aqua Net holding up so many teased bangs. Many loved these foods; many others derided them as pretentious yuppie garbage. But the source of their popularity, at least in home kitchens, was all but undisputed: The Silver Palate Cookbook, originally published in 1982, more than 2.5 million copies sold. The cookbook was a product of its time and place: New York’s Upper West Side in the late 1970s and early ’80s. A world synonymous (at least in the mind of the average moviegoer) with Woody Allen and then Nora Ephron. You can bet that before they were forced to play Pictionary at that dinner party, Harry and Sally were fed salmon mousse and chicken Marbella or maybe osso bucco. (Ephron was a Silver Palate fan.)"

From "‘The Silver Palate Cookbook’ Changed Home Cooking (and Pesto Consumption) As We Know It/Published in 1982, it brought verve to entertaining and taught a generation of American cooks to trust in bold flavors, fresh herbs, and the joys of improvisation" (Eater).

Yeah, I had 2 "Silver Palate" cookbooks on my kitchen cookbook shelf for more than 30 years. In fact, they made such a permanent impression on my eyeballs that I just went over to look at them. But no, they're gone. Some time in the last 10 years, I realized I hadn't opened them in more than 15 years and gave them the heave-ho. Maybe it was back in that year when we were all looking at things and asking if they "sparked joy." You can ask if it's time yet to oust that sparking-joy book, but that was never anything but a Kindle text. 

Here's the Kindle text of the "Silver Palate Cookbook." It's only $3. Eat like the 80s.

Here are 9 TikToks, carefully curated for you. Some people love them.

1. Réttir — sorting out the sheep in Iceland.

2. The woonerf — a type of street.

3. The Finnish way to live through winter — on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

4. If Arabic were English.

5. Choosing the boring life.

6. Overnight evolution.

7. White friend training.

8. Talking to the salad.

9. Hello, darkness, my old friend....