Poor old Nick Denton. He has his finger on the pulse of Manhattan (although, only the other day we found him a little behind the curve on hot conversation topics). And yet he he discovers that he can be seen eating lunch in the background of a segment on the Food Network, of all places. The shame of it! Even worse, he finds that loads of people have seen it and written to him about it:

One thing I don’t get: who are all these people who watch the Food Network? They should realize that it’s far less embarrassing to be caught by the Food Network, than to confess to watching the channel.

Actually, Nick knows who all those people are. They’re his audience. The ones who read Gawker and his excellent weblog. Except they’re supposed to be planning their own kidnappings, crashing birthday parties for hot models, and organizing threesomes with ‘dirtysomethings’. Instead, they seem to be at home with their cat and a carton of takeout Moo Shu Vegetables, watching Emeril pour too much Parmesan cheese on something. Bam! How embarrassing.