Does a condiment belong in a magazine? Essay

A magazine aims to attract a certain type of reader or a reader with a certain interest. Garden and Gun Magazine is about southern culture; our food, our manners, our hospitality, our hobbies, our way of life in general. I do not recommend â€Å"The Guiltless Pleasure† for our magazine because it does not have the same purpose as the other food articles; Rick Braggs is misleading throughout the piece, and strays from the overall purpose of the article. When a reader turns to the food section of our magazine, they anticipate finding delicious recipes resembling those that southerners used to make and recipes that have been handed down through generations. Which is why â€Å"The Guiltless Pleasure† would be out of place if published in our magazine. In â€Å" The Guiltless Pleasure†, the closest thing to a recipe is instruction to add a dollop of mayonnaise to certain foods, like mashed potatoes, to make them taste better. Although Braggs does draw attention to the myth of all southerners liking mayonnaise, the article does not have enough information on how to incorporate this â€Å"southern condiment† into different foods. Braggs segregates people into two classifications, which are mayonnaise people and mustard people. He talks a great deal about mayonnaise people but talks about mustard people just as much and talks very highly of mustard people. â€Å"The Guiltless Pleasure† was misleading in my opinion because Braggs seems to talk negatively about both mayonnaise and mustard people but mentions some pretty positive things about mustard people despite his unconditional love of mayonnaise. According to Braggs, mustard people do things like wear a certain type of athletic clothing, eat well, and have overall better health than the rest of us. He compares mayonnaise people by making them seem lazy with comments like, â€Å"We like L.L. Bean catalogs, too, but only because they offer most of their clothes in XXL, and we like their running shoes, which we wear to Popeye’s, and the mailbox-if it is not too far.† He also mentions how mayonnaise people like to vacation in cities like New Orleans because of the local foods which are loaded down with calories. He makes mustard people seem genuinely happier and healthier than mayonnaise people despite the rest of his article that is trying to make mayonnaise seem like a condiment that makes everything taste tremendously better. This is misleading because if mayonnaise really is as wonderful as he makes it out to be, it wouldn’t be associated with a negative, unhealthy lifestyle. Not only should this article not be published in Garden and Gun Magazine because it is misleading, but because it strays from topic on numerous occasions. Although the stories in the article about Braggs â€Å"dictator wife†, the origins of mayonnaise, the mayonnaise isle description, and Elvis liking mayonnaise may be entertaining, they do not belong in Garden and Gun Magazine or in â€Å"The Guiltless Pleasure†. They distract from his main point, which seems to be that mayonnaise is absolutely amazing. Braggs tells stories about his wife limiting the amount of mayonnaise he uses, the type of mayonnaise he uses, but allows him to eat however much mustard he pleases. He mentions other things in his article that distract from this point too; for example the long, drawn out comparison of mustard people and mayonnaise people. If he had incorporated more information about foods mayonnaise improves or elaborated on the ones he did mention and left out the â€Å"fluff† the article would be a wonderful addition to our magazine. In order for this article to go well in Garden and Gun it would have to have more useful tips on using mayonnaise to make foods taste better and less stories that are not directly linked to the main point of mayonnaise being a wonderful condiment. As well as having more positive things about mayonnaise and the people who like it throughout the article. Despite the drawn-out comparison between mayonnaise and mustard people, the contradicting statements, and the off-topic stories I found this article very entertaining. I would recommend this article as it is for a magazine focused solely on entertainment or as a blog on the Internet.