The last gasps of a dying culture May 21, 2008
Posted by Brendan in Life in America.trackback
I’m the first to defend free markets and a personal autonomy approaching the radical but when I read about the $175 (gold-topped) hamburger being served up in a Manhattan restaurant, I wanted to puke.
It’s not the idea of eating gold that makes me sick – it’s the very idea that any human being would engage in such a profoundly (and grotesquely) self-indulgent exercise. This is hyper-consumerism and limitless selfishness writ large. (Very, VERY large).
Here’s the deal:
Momentarily the city’s most expensive burger, the Richard Nouveau consists of 10 ounces of Kobe-raised beef crowned with a thick “lobe” of seared foie gras, 25 grams of shaved black truffles, and aged gruyere cheese. It comes enthroned on a brioche bun anointed with a homemade truffled mayonnaise and garnished with more shaved truffles. Oh, and gold leaf flakes from Japan, which has the yummiest gold.
Oil tops $130 a barrel; the dollar is in a free fall; the housing market is in the toilet; recession looms; and families are struggling with rising food prices – but the well heeled on Wall Street are literally eating gold for lunch.
Hey, it’s America, do whatever you want with your money. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a bit more merit in scarfing down a Big Mac for lunch and donating the other, oh I dunno, 170 bucks to a relief agency.
Here are your options, folks: You can shit gold or you can be a human being.
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