Award for Dumbest News Story of the Week

The full array: breaded, stuffed, fried, grilled, roasted, toasted, and raw--at Zia Lina's in Palermo

And the winner is: Joe Queenan of the Wall Street Journal with his Saturday plaint about the Mediterranean diet. And before I go any further, I’m also promoting his stupidity on the short list for dumbest news story of the year.

Listen to this: “The Mediterranean Diet might just as well be called the Monastic Diet or the Joy of Joylessness Diet.” That’s in Queenan’s story called “Our Inalienable Right to Snarf Junk Food.”

Where has this guy been hibernating? According to the New York Times, Queenan identifies himself as “a sneering churl,” but even sneering churls have to get their facts lined up. “For those of us who loathe fish and celery and lima beans and walnuts,” posits Queenan, “the Mediterranean Diet is a nutritional death sentence.”

Not my Mediterranean diet, Mr. Queenan. Contrary to your whine, my Mediterranean Diet is packed full with fresh and exciting flavors–rich with olive oil, pungent with garlic and onions, fragrant with ripe tomatoes and crisp, aromatic greens, with the juice of lemons and oranges, plus the seductive aromas of golden-crusted oven-roasted chickens and swordfish kebabs interleaved with bay leaves and set to sizzle on the grill. Monastic? Hardly!

So Queenan prefers to snarf ranch-flavored Doritos, bacon double cheese-burgers and banana splits? Qu’il mange de la brioche! Meanwhile, I’ll stick to the Mediterranean Diet!