Let Them Eat Something Else

Kerry Howley | October 4, 2006

In the trailer for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, a dolled up Kirsten Dunst downs various types of cake. Antoinette anti-defamers are highly disturbed by the choice of baked good; Marie Antoinette Association Prez Michele Lorin explains:

"We've spent years trying to convince people that the queen was not just a libertine who told the starving to eat cake. What do you see on the trailer? You see Marie Antoinette eating cake. You see her lying naked on a chaise lounge.

"I fear the film is going to set us back many years."

Unconcerned with the long, hard years of de-caking ahead, Dunst retorts: "It's kind of like a history of feelings rather than a history of facts."

One of those feelings presumably being: Let them eat cake.

Tim Cavanaugh's classic, must read meditation on the anti-defamation industry is here.

Related: The Center for Science in the Public Interest called carrot cake "food porn" a few years back, arguing "Some people are misled into thinking the carrot cake is healthful because it contains carrots."