NYT Columnist David Brooks Complains about $78 Meal (Mostly Liquid) at Newark Airport 🧃

Last edited Sat Sep 23, 2023, 12:54 AM - Edit history (1)

SPOOF TWEET!

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- David Brooks & the $78 airport meal the internet is talking about, WaPo, Sept. 22, 2023.

- (WaPo) As David Brooks was in the middle of a meal this week at Newark Liberty International Airport, the New York Times columnist was so perplexed by the price of his dinner that he took it as a sign of hard times in the U.S. economy. Brooks then snapped a photo of the barely touched burger and crinkle-cut fries that were divided by a bed of lettuce, tomato and empty ketchup packets, with what appeared to be a whiskey on the rocks.

“This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport,” he wrote Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.”

What was seemingly an everyday complaint about the cost of airport food quickly evolved into a viral talker that’s been viewed more than 34 million times on the platform as of early Friday. Some criticized Brooks for not specifying how a burger and fries goes for about $17 or $18 at the airport restaurant, and how the liquor probably made up the majority of his tab. Many turned the conservative columnist’s post into the latest meme.

While Brooks did not name the restaurant, internet sleuths figured out that he was dining at 1911 Smoke House Barbeque, a Trenton-based restaurant that opened a location in Terminal A of the airport earlier this year. The restaurant — whose slogan is “You can’t beat our meat” — confirmed on Facebook that Brooks had eaten at the Newark Airport location, saying that the journalist had misled his more than 253,000 X followers by not pointing out how his drink was most of his bill. X has also added a note to Brooks’s post to give users more context on the most talked-about airport meal in recent memory.

“Bar tab was almost 80% and he’s complaining about the cost of his meal,” the restaurant wrote. “Keep drinking buddy — we get paid off everything.”.....https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/09/22/david-brooks-newark-airport-meal/

* Tweet by the multimillionaire conservative journalist, David Brooks.

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