More Mackey idiocy

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey called Obamacare fascist. To which I say, takes one to know one. In fact, Mackey's vision of corporatist control and the way he runs his supermarket chain are much closer to any "dictionary definition" of fascism than Obamacare.

He's treading on thin ice because, again by definition, most of the people who shop at Whole Foods are going to be progressive and they don't like the idea of supporting a bigoted reactionary.

I once boycotted the corner bakery in Paris because they were rude at one point. I discovered that the bakery continued to prosper but I had to walk twice as far for my morning croissants, so I gave it up and came to the conclusion that personal boycotts are by and large pointless.

Even an organized boycott in this case would achieve what exactly? Mackey has preemptively apologized, so would the goal be to change this leopard's spots or get a new leopard? Neither is likely to happen.

I have other beefs with Whole Foods, as readers of my food blog know (no pun intended, because beef is not one of them). I do try to shop alternatively where possible but convenience often wins out and WF remains the best one-stop shopping for high-quality food in my little neck of the woods. But WF is vulnerable to competition. Other premium-quality supermarkets are unlikely to move into Chevy Chase just because they see a disaffection with Mackey among progressive shoppers. But once they do move in, disaffected shoppers like myself will rush to the competition.

Jon Stewart is just a comedian

So now liberals are upset because Jon Stewart is making fun of the trillion-dollar platinum coin. Of course that's what comedians do -- make fun of idiotic ideas, and even its backers acknowledge it is idiotic. Paul Krugman is upset because Stewart's humor, he feels, is good because it is anchored in reality and based on solid research.

Sometimes it is. But sometimes it isn't. Jon Stewart is a funny guy but I pretty much stopped watching him when he took himself way too seriously and staged this "unify the country" rally on the National Mall with Stephen Colbert.

The problem here is not that Jon Stewart doesn't understand economics -- he clearly doesn't but neither does Michael Bloomberg and many other people who matter more -- but that anyone takes his jokes about platinum coins seriously. Lighten up. It really is just a comedy show.

Italy fever

For some reason, I've been in the grip of Italy fever lately. I'm liking Italian food, looking for places in Italy to visit, and last week I even started an intensive Italian language course.

I've always wanted to learn Italian just because I like the language, the culture, the place. It always seemed a bit impractical since I don't really need it for short visits and there's really not much prospect of ever living there for an extended period of time. Spanish always seemed more practical because it is so widespread in this country.

But what the heck. I'm not getting any younger and I might enjoy learning a new language just for the fun of it. The Italian Culture Institute in Bethesda offers an accelerated course for people who already speak another Romance language (French, Spanish or Portuguese). The class is small, the teacher is Italian, from Liguria, so it's a fairly ideal situation. We'll see whether I go beyond this initial course of 10 sessions once a week.

I've been to Italy often but it never seems to be enough. I went to Rome and Frascati for a week or so two or three times in my early trips to Europe as a Jesuit seminarian. I spent a couple days in Genoa waiting to board the Michelangelo for my voyage home after my Fulbright year. I traveled for business and pleasure when I moved back to Europe as a journalist, working on stories in Milan and Rome, visiting Venice and Florence. During my time at Institutional Investor, I went to Turin for a bank conference and had a spectacular dinner with white truffles; attended a three-day conference at the Villa d'Este on Lake Como with its glorious scenery and food; and most fun of all spent a few days with a Belgian banker at his villa outside Siena to write a story about his project of doing the ultimate guidebook on Tuscany. I spent a wonderful week over Christmas with American friends in Rome. Finally, to spend more time in Italy I rented a farmhouse outside Perugia for a month, taking day trips to Rome, Florence, Assisi, Spoleto, Ravenna and stopping in Venice and the Alto Adige on the way home. At Bloomberg, I headed the European team covering the G-7 summit in Naples. We stayed across the bay in Sorrento at the Grand Hotel and visited Pompeii. My last trip there was to Venice during my two-month stay in Munich working on a supplement for the Washington Times.

I've never been to the Amalfi coast or Capri, to Sicily or Bari, and I've spent too little time in Bologna and Emilia Romagna in general. But right now we are looking at a rental house in Umbria, this time near Todi. There is this great line in La Dolce Vita when Marcello drives outside Rome and stops at a country restaurant. The setting is so idyllic that as he's watching the waitress he exclaims, "You are like an Umbrian angel." Umbria does not have the best wine or cuisine in Italy, but it has wonderful scenery, Etruscan ruins, the incredible cultural richness that seeps out of Italy, and it's midway between Rome and Tuscany. We'll see.