Be Prepared

In the half-dozen years since The Omnivore’s Dilemma became the benchmark argument for knowing where the stuff you eat comes from, Michael Pollan has ascended to the top of the locavore food chain. He’s now arguably the most respected, and certainly one of the most visible, proponents of locally grown and sourced food. Alice Waters may have been doing it longer and Eric Schlosser louder, but Pollan’s influence on how we eat and what we think about it—through Omnivore and his subsequent books and articles—has been widespread and profound, enough to reach the ear of our current commander in chief

culture Apr/May 2011

Rabbit Redux

"Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." So said malevolent tycoon Noah Cross to Jake Gittes, the gullible gumshoe in Roman Polanski's Chinatown, a dark hymn to Americans' limitless capacity for self-delusion in the face of power. Lately, Polanski must be wondering how his old pal Hugh Hefner has managed—with a history scarcely less scandalous than his own—to win respectability and even veneration from quarters that once damned him as little more than a smut peddler, albeit one with a killer sense of style and a terrific head for business. Maybe