The Spice Is Right 0
One thing I cannot understand is the “pumpkin spice” fad. Go to your local grocery store and browse the spice rack–I defy you to find “pumpkin spice” with a McCormacks label and, on the off chance that you do, you will find that it has a list of ingredients that have nothing whatsoever to do with large orange gourds.
Indeed, I have long held that anyone who has eaten a well-prepared sweet potato pie will not waste time on pumpkins again.
Frank Bruni tries to understand “pumpkin spice” and finds a metaphor. A snippet:
It’s invention run amok, marketing gone mad, the odoriferous emblem of commercialism without compunction or bounds. It’s the transformation of an illusion — there isn’t any spice called pumpkin, nor any pumpkin this spicy — into a reality.
Oh, hell, let’s just go there: It’s Donald Trump. I don’t mean the color of his hair, though pumpkin spice is as good a description of it as any. I mean that pumpkin spice became special by shamelessly insisting that it was and ruthlessly creeping into every corner of the culture that was docile, dippy or lazy enough to accommodate it.
