That’s right. The New York Times, our newspaper of choice for cradling fish and chips or mopping up the seepage from a hanger steak (let’s see you do that with a Kindle), has declared that butchers are the hotness of the culinary universe.

Sure chefs are the rock stars, the paper reasons, but they are in the arena windmilling and grinding out cock rock, while the butcher, well, the butcher is in a back room bathed in blood, sulking and flexing his muscles. To hear the Times tell it, butchers are a cross between Danzig and Bright Eyes, while chefs (especially Daniel Boulud) are Def Lepard (and of course Mario Batali is Meat Loaf, but that’s too easy).

They even have this quote from a butcher groupie:

“Think about it. What’s sexy?” said Tia Keenan, the fromager at Casellula Cheese and Wine Café and an unabashed butcher fan. “Dangerous is sometimes sexy, and they are generally big guys with knives who are covered in blood.”

The article (yet again, as if New York magazine wasn’t doing a good enough job of this already) lovingly caresses Marlow & Daughters butcher Tom Mylan, who the paper calls “broody” (maybe he’s Morrisey). But then the writer unearths Ryan Farr, of San Francisco, a, um, rather colorful butcher who calls himself a “producer of porcine pleasure”and gives cutting demonstrations, complete with cocktails. For $30, Farr followers can drink at a local bar while he butchers a pig (and soon, a lamb and a quarter of a steer). And then there’s this fantasy he has about Mylan, which we don’t know quite what to make of:

Mr. Farr has a dream. “I want to throw a 300-pound pig in the middle of a room full of people and just tag-team it with him,” he said. So far, Mr. Mylan hasn’t set a date.

There was an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times written by a professor of history at  Texas State University — one James E. McWilliams. And damned if McWilliams isn’t a mouthpiece for agribusiness pork. But what do you expect coming from Texas State University? Also this guy wrote a book that is like the opposite of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” called  “Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.” His thesis in the op-ed titled “Free-Range Trichinosis” is basically that free-range pork invites disease by allowing the pigs out into the outdoors that harbor all the dangers we brought the pigs inside to avoid. He even tries to combat the argument that heritage-bred free-range pigs taste better. But at least he does so with humor and flair, by relating advocates of the aforementioned to a certain particular breed of hunter in Texas:

It may be objectively true that animals living in a state of nature produce sweeter meat. There are hunters in East Texas who track wild hogs, slice off their testicles so the beasts will fatten and lose their gamy taste and then shoot them months later. These gentlemen swear by the superior flavor. Don’t count on me to challenge the taste assessments of people who thrive on such blood sport. If they say it’s better, it’s better.

Mr. McWilliams, let the Butcher be the first to say that you should have your testicles sliced off until you fatten and lose your gamey flavor.

Now that every morning television show in the land has broadcast at least one story on the Bacon Explosion recipe (even the Gray Lady rolled up her sleeves), it’s inevitable that a whole lot of amateur meat eaters are going to try to take this artery-clogging 5,000-calorie bomb on. And the results can be disastrous. The Butcher has seen men spontaneously combust after consuming lesser quantities of lard and fat mixed with cases of beer (and, of course, a small amount of lighter fluid, but we won’t get into that here.)

It’s been called a heart attack waiting to happen. The Butcher Blog would like to take this opportunity to offer cold hard cash —American dollars — to anyone who can prove Bacon Explosion-induced cardiac arrest. The heart attack should occur soon after, or preferably during, consumption. A doctor’s testimonial will suffice, but a video would be nice.

Sichuan cooking expert Fuchsia Dunlop will eat your dog. Particularly yappy Pomeranians, pesky poodles, milling mutts and perhaps the Montauk Monster are all potential fodder for the Chinese menu. Dunlop writes in today’s Times Op-Ed page of the Beijing Catering Association’s decision to take dog off the menu during the Olympics. She goes on and on about Marco Polo and the history of dog food in China and how it’s not even seasonal appropriate fare (apparently eating Fido in August is like wearing white after Labor Day), until finally she gets to the meat of the matter:

“In case you’re wondering, there is nothing alarming about the taste of dog: smothered in chilies and aromatic spices in a Hunanese winter stew, it might remind you of lamb.”

Well, thank you Miss Dunlop. At last. As we all know, anything smothered in chilies is delicious. If you are lucky and we get around it, we will share with you our chilies-smothered recipe for Breasts of Pain torn from a Thrasher magazine in ’80s (the recipe calls for a 12 pack of Bud longnecks, in addition to chilies, chili powder, jalapenos and hot pepper sauce). Dunlop does have the presence of mind to point out that eating other things that many find morally questionable–such as shark fins, live turtles and Tibetan monks–does not seem to bother China men one bit. Any regular reader of this space would know that we are only concerned with thing: how does it taste? Okay, we might be concerned with a couple other things, (perhaps the quality of life of the dog in this video of a drunk woman in a bikini demonstrating the Wii fit), but the point here is that now thanks to a few squeamish officials, adventurous travelers and obese Americans and Germans will be robbed of their chance to sample a local delicacy. The Olympics always seem to bring this sort of fervor. Seoul deemed dogmeat unsuitable for area eateries when the Games descended on that fair city and the World Cup has grappled with canine and kitty comestibles for years. Though it should be pointed out Atlanta said nothing to dissuade places from serving up cowboy caviar during the ’96 Games. God bless America.