March 27, 2019

People Are Very Upset About the Way This Dude Cuts His Bagels

Doesn’t seem like an ideal way to cut them!

Twitter user Alek Krautmann ignited controversy this morning with his photo of vertically sliced bagels.

First things first, these bagels appear to be from Panera Bread, which may be a perfectly acceptable bagel vendor in St. Louis, but if you live in New York and you want a bagel, it’s probably a good idea to keep walking to a place whose owner is not currently attempting to “atone for his family’s Nazi past.”

But their provenance aside, these bagels have been sliced in a way that, depending who you ask, is either a major faux pas or the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The original tweet was quickly ratioed, and responses ridiculing the sliced bagel concept garnered more likes than the original post.

Even Dictionary.com chimed in, arguing that the etymology of the word “bagel” requires it to take the shape of a ring.

Sliced bagel critics say that the slices on either side of the bagel hole would be too small, and that part of the joy of eating a bagel comes from sinking one’s teeth into its thick, chewy dough. Fans have said that the bagel slices have more surface area for schmears and that some people prefer not to eat a whole bagel — a problem I can’t claim to have ever encountered. If you ask me, pizza should be folded, pasta water should be salted, and bagels should be sliced through the middle and loaded with cream cheese, maybe some lox.

Bagels are also excellent sandwich vessels. A bacon, egg and cheese just wouldn’t be the same sandwiched between wafer-thin discs. Can a slice of tomato even fit atop a bread-sliced bagel crisp?

But I won’t completely knock it until I try it. I just have to find a New York bagel shop that’s willing to butcher a perfectly good hunk of dough. After all, stranger things have happened.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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