Dining on Sacred Cow
An Insectivore’s Manifesto
Although we lost Hedgie in 2005, it would take me until January 2012 to understand truly what she was made of. Amidst the bustle of a night market off Beijing’s trendy Wangfujing Street, I made final communion with my late pet hedgehog: for about $3, I polished off two chili-sprinkled grasshoppers and four baby scorpions. I became an insectivore.
Morons and Sam Baciles
And while it’s clear that there is more than enough blame to go around, one emerging story of culpability might be most illustrative. In early press correspondences, a man identifying himself as Sam Bacile, an “Israeli Jew” living in California, claimed to have produced the film with the support of “100 Jewish donors.” Just as American Jews had begun to reconcile themselves to the unfortunate truth—despite lingering suspicions: since when is Bacile a Jewish name?—the Associated Press reported the Bacile identity to be nothing more than an alias for Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Christian Egyptian-American at the helm of the film’s production.
