Or is it the other way around?  I really don’t care; I am just trying to get your attention, fill column inches, make deadlines and stir up a little bad blood, because you know what?  I’m a bad blood stirrer-upper.

My only stipulation is that there has to be a valid camp of supporters on each side of the Caucasoid vs. Negrasoid smoke factor—otherwise, any attempt to validate feminoid color/no color heat is moot.

If I pursued it anyway, I would not only be a spoon-savvy mixologist specializing in hematology, I would be a twat.

No man is an Isle. Except Ray.

You know, reminsicent of the nonsensical article written by Ray Isle, wine editor at Food & Wine, former editor of Wine & Spirits Magazine and heir apparent to the editorship of Make It Up As I Go Along Quarterly.

The article ‘Wine’s Nastiest Feud’ appeared in Food & Wine’s ‘Inspiration Served Daily’ blog on September 19, and—much as savage politicians use a historically-naïve narrative of Sunni/Shi’a infighting to start wars—Isle appears to have pulled a wine feud out of enological thin air.  According to him, as we speak, there is a uncivil war raging in winetopia among people who like really big blowsy wines and people who don’t.  He posits that the leader of the first faction is Robert Parker Jr., quoting some context-free Parker wisdom pearls dissing namby-pamby wines, and in the other corner, he high-fives Jon Bonné of the San Francisco Chronicle and Eric Asimov of The New York Times.

Prefers Caymus. Will kill you if you don’t.

To hear Ray Isle tell it, the wine world has been rent asunder by sectarian conflict whose combatants have taken to regarding each other with ‘violent absolutism’ including calling each other names like ‘coward’ and ‘charlatan’ and ‘jihadist’—evidently, the feudistas’s equivalent of suicide bombing.  It is, in his estimation, a pitched battled filled with vitriol and grandstanding, although—like a kid watching two bugs in a mason jar—he finds it ‘interesting’.

What I find interesting is that Isle’s concept is so detached from reality as to qualify as today’s source of the very inspiration that F&W  claims, in fact, to serve daily.

‘Titillation Perved Daily’

Although using extremist examples to prove a point breaks a cardinal commandment of syllogism, if Isle can do it, so can I.  In my major premise, I declared that white chicks are hotter than black chicks; in my minor premise, I subliminally projected a photograph of a) Keira Knightley and b) Whoopi Goldberg into your mind via the magic of Svengaliism, and thus, you reached a logica nova conclusion in support of my thesis.  If big words are not your forte, a Venn diagram may help:

1. White chicks are hotter than black chicks. (MaP)
2. Keira is a white chick and Whoopi is a black chick. (MiP)
3. All Greeks are mortal. (SaP)

If there is any glaring syllogistic error in this archetype, it is known as the fallacy of exclusive premises.  Now class, whereas I realize that this is boring, I challenge you stick around and enjoy the remarkable experience of becoming both smarter and stupider simultaneously.

In simplistic terms that even a Special Ed elementary schooler can understand, the conclusion implicates all members of the major term (P — meaning the proposition is accurate; however, the major premise does not account for them all (i.e., P is either an affirmative predicate or a particular subject there).

Got it?  Good. So, to reduce Ray Isle’s argument to another Venn diagram, this time a Barbari (AAI-1), we have:

1. Robert Parker and Eric Asimov are wine lovers. (MaP)
2. Parker and Asimov are at each other’s throats over different wine styles. (MiP)
3. All wine lovers are at each other’s throats over different wine styles. (SaP)

The fallacy is glaring.  In the first place, the example Isle gives is Caymus Special Selection Cab, 2010, which Parker rated at 98.  He follows up with a mysterious ‘tasting’ in which sommeliers found the same wine appalling.  Considering that the 126 reviews found of this wine on Cellar Tracker thought it rated, on average, 94.5 points, the conclusion Isle should have reached (using elementary logic) is not that there is a huge schism between wine experts on the quality of Caymus Special Selection, but rather, there is a schism among sommeliers who may not know what the word ‘appalling’ means.  That would be worth a column; fo’ shizzle, mah nizzle.

Blind Melon Chitlins begs to disagree.

Further, I can find no evidence that any reputable wine pro anywhere seriously discounts what Isle defines as ‘lean and racy wine’ as being bad wine; certainly none whom the scarehead-loving editor claim despises light, balanced wine with ‘knives-out absolutism’.  He has apparently stumbled across a handful of online disputes, but fails to either link them nor state the qualifications of disputer or disputee.  Frankly, I guarantee you that I can find internet threads that insist that Whoopi Goldberg in sweatpants is better fap material that Keira Knightley topless in The Hole; in fact, one blog come instantly to mind: Blind Melon Chitlins’.

So, taking deductive reasoning off the shelf once again, we find ourselves staring squarely down the maw of a Darapti (AAI-3):

1. Ray Isle has to write something inspiring about wine daily. (MaP)
2. There are not enough genuine topics related to wine that could possibly hold the interest of even the most dedicated wine geek on a daily basis, so he has to use hyperbolic headlines to sucker you into reading his silliness. (MaS)
3. White chicks are hotter than black chicks. (SiP)

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http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/2014/9/19/the-battle-for-your-wines-soul