As CNN’s Candy Crowley



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As CNN’s Candy Crowley, the debate moderator, was delivering

her opening remarks, a dark blue strip at screen bottom

displayed the question: “Should the electoral college be

abolished?” and displayed live, shifting percentile results

as viewers clicked “Yes,” “No” or “Don’t Know.” A

moment later, another question: “Do you think journalists

are generally biased?”

Taste of AmericaWhat Happened to the American Middle-Class

Meal?
Wither goes our economy, so too goes our cuisine
By Josh Ozersky | @OzerskyTV | October 17, 2012 |

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Steven Valenti / Waterbury Republican-American / APOzersky's

latest book, Colonel Sanders and the American Dream, was

published in May 2012. His videos about food and gastronomy

can be seen on Ozersky.TV.
Living in a big city, as I do, it isn’t hard for me to spend

a lot on dinner. One big meal, and you can find yourself over

$200 poorer, just for two people. Of course, it isn’t hard

for me to spend very little on dinner either. I got fried

pork chops and pork fried rice sent to me from the local

Chinese takeout last night, and the whole meal cost me

something like nine dollars. What is hard to get is a meal

for $50 or so, and that seemingly innocuous fact speaks to an

insidious trend not just in the food world.

(MORE: The Myth of Bootstrapping)

Michael Whiteman, the restaurant industry guru who sends out

a list of coming restaurant trends each year, calls this

“dumbelling.” When Whiteman (whom I know well) first wrote

about the trend, he had fast food in mind – in particular

the simultaneous drift towards “premium” items on one side

of the menu, and ultra-cheap “value” items on the other. At

McDonalds and other burger chains, the marquee burgers are

edging upward to $6 or even more; meanwhile, unspeakably

gnarly, $1 burgers occupy the bargain basement. It’s not

just at McDonalds that this sinister tendency plays out;

dumbelling is happening in the culture as a whole, with a

Funyun economy existing for the poor, and an heirloom tomato

one for the prosperous.