The mainstream media has once again been accused of pilfering from the little guy in his mom's basement, only this time the stakes have been raised dramatically. And so have the steaks.
At this time of year, everyone and their Tumblr-owning sister tries to come up with an NCAA Tournament-style bracket for a fake contest between 64 things (that probably have nothing to do with basketball or sport) in a desperate effort to create content that will seem timely. That's March Madness for you. The food bloggers at "So Good" thought they had hit on the winning recipe—"Meat Madness," a reader poll to determine the ultimate animal-based food stuffs.
So imagine their horror when, a full week later, ESPN Page 2 contributor Paul Lukas published his own version of the meat bracket on the the Worldwide Leader's website. The format was slightly different—So Good only had 32 meats, and Lukas picked all the winners himself—but the idea was the same, a tournament bracket to crown one true meat champion.
What's going on here? Protein plagiarism? Mainstream disrespect of blogger pork? Does the little guy have a big beef? We grilled Lukas via email to get his excuse....
I'd like to think there's enough meat to go around for everyone...
For the record: I hadn't seen that other bracket until you just showed it to me now. If I had, I might not have done my own bracket (or at least would have consulted the other guy first). For what it's worth, my bracket was written during the weekend of the 14th-15th, although it didn't run until yesterday. Not that I can prove any of that, but I'd like to think my meat bona fides have been fairly well established over the years. Here I am in the front row of a pig butchery class, for example. I'm the one wearing a T-shirt that shows a cow happily slicing itself into steaks. I rest my case.
Yes, that is certainly convincing. Lukas has made his bones writing about this stuff, so biting into the subject is definitely not a rare occurrence for him. Fortunately, he also has a solution for this tough problem:
What we need, clearly, is a bracket of meat brackets, so MY meat bracket can face off against (and, of course, defeat) HIS meat bracket, along with the several others floating around out there.
Sure, that would work. Chew on that for awhile and get back to us.
Meat Madness: Which Meat Deserves the Title? [So Good]
The meat bracket [Page 2]
ESPN Columnist Presents His Own Meat Bracket [So Good]