It's not wise to get on Anthony Bourdain's bad side. He minces steak tartare, not words. The last person to really feel the brunt of his rage was celebrity chef Paula Deen, whom he criticized for pushing unhealthy food and diabetes drugs in quick succession. But he and Deen were never pals. The same cannot be said of his newest target: the Travel Channel, which aired his TV show "No Reservations" for seven years before ending its run with an episode about Brooklyn last night.
Bourdain got angry with the Travel Channel for including shots of Cadillac cars in a seemingly innocuous promo for the series finale. He took to Twitter -- which was called @noreservations until June -- to express his rage. Click through the (WARNING: profanity-laced) Tweets below to see some of what he said:
Yikes! Let's hope that the folks at PBS, the home of Bourdain's new show with David Chang "The Mind of a Chef," keep their star happy. They don't need any more enemies.
Bourdain, for his part, doesn't seem to be taking any chances when it comes to the possibility that he'll be pissed off by more ad execs -- in addition to PBS, he has shows premiering on ABC and CNN, so he has at least two channels to spare in case he gets in more feuds.
(h/t The Braiser)
UPDATE: Nov. 13, 3:30 pm -- On Sunday, Bourdain posted a long essay on his Tumblr explaining in detail the reasoning behind his aggressive series of Tweets regarding the Travel Channel. It's fairly repetitive and rambling, but his essential point seems to be encapsulated in these two paragraphs near the middle:
The network made a commercial, with me endorsing a product, and hadn’t even bothered to ask me. After the first airing of the commercial, I let the network know of my extreme displeasure. Fair warning one would think. They ran it again anyway.
I have no problem with Cadillac, by the way. A couple of people have come up to me after reading my enraged twitter rants on this subject and asked me what my problem is with them. No problem. With them.