Erika - I just felt driven to answer those questions. I have been so taken aback by this whole thing. I had no idea there were so many food blog haters out there. I also never knew all the haters thought we had such attitudes. Craziness.

Just saw your latest comment on the ongoing Batali banter. Way to drive it home once again! Nicely done.

Sheliza - yes that’s exactly it. The Internet is filled with wonderful things and downright frightening things. It’s freedom of speech to the extreme. It’s my choice how I exercise my freedom to read it all.

Darlene - good points about old media crumbling at the hands of new media. Whether Mario likes it or not, blogging is here to stay. Also, I see that you picked up on the whole anonymous blogging bit he wrote about. I still am not sure how I feel about it. I originally wanted to be anonymous like the Zagat critics. Maybe I should “show my face”.

Tumerica - I agree with everything you wrote. My guess is that he hates the criticism and needs someone to lash out at. It’s too bad - many of us food bloggers are also his customers. I am sure he hates us a lot less when we sign our credit card bills. Oh well.

Mario makes great points, but leaves out one essential thing–many of us humans love food and love to think about it and write about it. The passion he has for his art is like the passion I feel and you feel about food and about writing about food. It’s all love and it’s all good. We don’t have to compete and in any case, we will not go away. Mario can reject us, but we’re still gonna be there tomorrow.

And, he’s throwing out the baby with the Meyer lemon-scented finger-bowl water. There are sucky food blogs and there are fabulous food blogs. It’s pure prejudice to say food-blogging in general is deplorable. We know it ain’t so.

Despite his blindness to the beauties of food-blogging, I still think he’s cute and I’d still love to try his food. Pour some of that olive oil on me, babee!

In my opinion blogs in general tend to be more fun to read than newspapers. Have you noticed the recent increase in newspaper blogs? That’s saying something. I think newspapers have finally discovered that people like reading blogs and the accompanying opinions, however slanted. This is while daily newspaper subscribers are rapidly declining.