New York Times food writer and reporter Mark Bittman issued an apology [1] on his nytimes.com blog on Tuesday for an offensive post on the recent death of Chick-fil-A's vice-president for public relations Donald Perry.
In a recent blog post, I used an inappropriate phrase to refer to the late VP of PR for Chick-fil-A. My choice of words did not rise to either my own standards or to The Times’s, and the phrase has been removed from the post. I regret this lapse.
Bittman deleted the phrase in bold below from an August 3 round-up blog post, as noted on Jim Romenesko's media blog [2]. (The previous item had been about pigs.)
Speaking of pigs, the VP of PR for Chick-fil-A dropped dead of a heart attack the week after the chain’s latest homophobia/anti-gay marriage scandal. Here’s an obit, and here’s more about him. Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A had record-breaking profits after its President, Dan Cathy, drew a line in the sand over same-sex marriage.
Bittman's callous phrase "dropped dead of a heart attack" remains.
Bittman has long has a nasty self-righteous liberal streak, working sophomoric political commentary into his food pieces. In an March 29, 2011 column for the print edition Bittman announced [3] he was fasting in protest against a Republican plan to cut food stamps: "These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts - they'd barely make a dent - will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now....This is a moral issue; the budget is a moral document....we can sink further into debt and amoral individualism by demonizing and starving the poor. Which side are you on?"
At the end of the fast Bittman, a best-selling cookbook author who makes a good living selling his wares to other privileged foodies, followed up on his blog blaming hunger on "unregulated capitalism and greed [4]" and calling for higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy.