The increasingly troubled, cobra-heart-eating, self-loathing Anthony Bourdain has been passing around galleys for his new book Medium Raw. In it, he goes out of his way to spill his own reptilian venom on targets in every corner of the food world. The chapter in which he disgorges his scatological phlegm, entitled "Heroes and Villains," he describes as "the most vicious, hateful, and angry single chapter of my life." Yet however concocted most of his accusations are (don't publishers pass authors' trash by libel lawyers anymore?), what is most disturbing is that Bourdain, who showed his gifts as a writer when he penned the post-druggie, post-boozy story of his sordid past in Kitchen Confidential, seems to have lost all ability to construct a single paragraph without using the words "douche bag," "asshole," and "fuck," which you expect from illiterate, ever-anonymous food bloggers but not from the once-stylish Bourdain.

You could see it coming: When he published Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook (2004), he needed two co-authors to cobble the thing together, telling the reader, "if, from time to time, I refer to you as a 'useless screwhead,' I will expect you to understand—and not take it personally" and then going on an Abby Hoffman-like tear in the voice of a real sixties kinda-guy: "The enjoyment of a long lunch—at table with good friends, tearing into the good stuff made with love and pride—that, arguably is in the blood, or at least in your cultural heritage. But you've got that already, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have forked over thirty-five bucks to some publishing conglomerate for this book. Would you? Well? Would you? Speak up! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Down, boy.

Things got worse after that. Last year in an interview he said of himself, "I'll live with 'celebrity chef,' or 'television personality,' but in my heart of hearts, I'd put it on the same level as lighting director on porn film, habitual masturbator, or aspiring arsonist."

Sadly, that's about the sum total of what Bourdain has become. Which is too bad, really. He once had a novel voice, an iconoclast's passion, but now he has spiraled down to the level of the foul-mouthed bloggers who idolize him. Once he was a valuable demolisher of culinary pretension; now he is a fanatic seeking to shore up his own sick TV persona. And as Santayana observed, "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."

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