Frank Bruni Doesn't Want Your Criticism
This morning, 1,000-year-old Cindy Adams responded to a jibe Frank Bruni stuck into his New York Times review last week of Katz's Deli in which he noted that the restaurant had been around since 1888, "longer than Cindy Adams." Har! And she responded in kind:
LAST week the New Yorker immortal ized me. Everybody mentioned it. Last week the restaurant critic of our city's broadsheet shpritzed me. Even typesetters mustn't read Mr. Bruno, or whatever his name is, because nobody mentioned it. He wasn't critiqueing star chef Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin, the town's Number One restaurant, or owner Sirio Maccioni's Le Cirque, the world's most famous restaurant. Somewhere between sauerkraut and pastrami he said Katz's Deli opened 1888, which was even "before Cindy Adams." It's actually a funny line. Someday I'll have to read him - or let my dogs pour over him.
But it's unlikely anyone will be discussing this in the comments section on Bruni's blog. On a New York Times internal wiki's page, "General Guidelines for Approving Reader Comments on Blogs," there are the rules you'd expect: no profanity, nothing "grossly off topic," English only, that sort of thing. But then there's a special section about Frank Bruni's blog Diner's Journal.
Frank Bruni doesn't want comments that discuss his reviews. People can disagree with stuff he posts on the blog. A prime example of what he doesn't want is the first ten or so comments on the restaurant-landmarking post, where everybody screamed at him for giving 4 Seasons 2 stars. The post wasn't about the 4 Seasons review so the comments were off-topic. It's the same reason we don't publish letters taking issue with our critics' opinions. You'd just get a bunch of people screaming "No it's not!" and "Yes it is!" and there would be no dialogue, just shouting.
If you can't take the heat, get out of the... oh, never mind. So Bruni doesn't want his blog to turn into Chowhound, fine. We hear that! But we wonder what would happen if Cindy Adams showed up there. Then again, does she even know what the Internet is?
