Freelance writer Selene Nelson wrote to William Sitwell, the editor of Waitrose Food magazine, suggesting a series on vegan cooking.
Her query followed a standard format, with extra exclamation points to make her stand out:
Hi William,
…I’m a freelance food and travel writer for Town & Country, Huff Post, Food Republic, SUITCASE Magazine etc., and I wanted to pitch an idea for a regular feature in Waitrose Food.
Recently there’s been a huge rise in veganism, with people increasingly interested in its health and environmental benefits, as well as issues surrounding animal welfare. The popularity of the movement is likely to continue to skyrocket, and I think there’s a great opportunity for Waitrose Food to introduce a series on vegan cooking… In January the ‘Veganuary’ incentive is expected to be more popular than ever, and people will be keen to discover plant-based meal ideas. Even for people not looking to change their diet, I think having some more healthy, eco-friendly meals won’t go amiss, particularly in the New Year!….
I have lots of ideas for this but don’t want to bombard you! …I strongly believe this would be a welcome, and timely, new addition to Waitrose Food. …let me know if you have any questions or want to see any further writing samples. Many thanks and I look forward to hearing from you!…
A decent job, although an editor might have asked for some numbers to back up “huge rise,” “skyrocket,” and “more popular than ever.”
“Or two by two. How about killing them two by two?”
Editor Sitwell did not ask for grubby numbers. He simply wrote:
Hi Selene
Thanks for this.
How about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?
Gulp, what?
Gamely, Nelson replied:
Hi William,
Thanks for your interesting response. I drank some delicious (vegan) red wine last night so I’m sure a feature on that would appeal… I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘exposing their hypocrisy’, but I’m certainly interested in exploring why just the mention of veganism makes some people so hostile. It sounds like you have some opinions on this? I’d love to know more!
He responded flippantly “I like the idea of a column called The Honest Vegan; a millennial’s diary of earnest endeavour and bacon sandwiches…”
Nelson seems to have sensed Sitwell would not be taking up her idea of a series on vegan cooking. If she’d read his piece for The Times on “foodie trends of 2018,” Sitwell’s reaction might have startled her less.
“The vegan wants to know our thoughts? Have her come lunch with us!”
That’s a jocular piece which he says you should heed unless you’re a “non-drinking, chickpea residue-drenched, personalised diet-loving vegan.” According to Buzzfeed, he also referred to a “vegan snowball,” which “had slow beginnings among shampoo-averse hippies in the 1970s, but now vegans are parking their tanks on all of our lawns and their instruction manuals are coming like propaganda pamphlets dropping from the sky.”
(Since the real shampoo problem caused by 1970s hippies was them using up all the Herbal Essence with constant showers, we’d say Sitwell is not striving for objectivity.)
“Turnip recipes – yes, turnips! – from around the world would make a gala holiday issue.”
Persevering, Nelson queried Buzzfeed about writing a story on hostility toward vegans. (She’d been vegan for only a year, so this was new to her.) She used Sitwell’s email as an example. Buzzfeed was interested – not in giving Nelson a gig, but in writing their own story about the Nelson-Sitwell correspondence. (Hint: no money for Nelson. Further hint: don’t read the comments.)
Nelson went along, telling Buzzfeed “I’ve written about many divisive topics, like capital punishment and murder cases and domestic violence, and I’ve never had a response like that to any of my articles or pitches.”
After Buzzfeed inquired, Sitwell stated:
I love and respect people of all appetites be they vegan, vegetarian or meat eaters, which I show week in week out through my writing, editing and broadcasting. I apologise profusely to anyone who has been offended or upset by this.
Not good. “I show…” is a form of “People who know me won’t be fooled by what I say.”
Not good enough for Waitrose Food, which said, “Even though this was a private email William’s gone too far and his words are extremely inappropriate, insensitive and absolutely do not represent our views.” Then they… accepted his resignation. No wonder Sitwell finds vegans menacing.
Worried about the feelings of vegans versus the feelings of funloving editors? Please spare a thought for the feelings of freelancers. Sitwell’s emails were a joke, but also a rude brushoff.
The New York Times, reporting on this, gives actual numbers for the rise in British vegans, and notes that Waitrose grocery stores recently introduced a line of vegan and vegetarian products. Bad timing, Mr. Sitwell. Let us hope that things go more smoothly at Sitwell’s other writing gigs, and his appearances on MasterChef UK.
He put forth another apology:
Today I just want to make two points.
Firstly, to reiterate my apology to any food- and life-loving vegan who was genuinely offended by remarks written by me as an ill-judged joke in a private email and now widely reported.
Second, a word about my team on Waitrose & Partners Food. For two amazing decades I’ve worked with simply the best crew in the business. There is no more talented art director than Kerry Wakefield, my lovely deputy Jess, PA Morgan, Dr Lucy heading food, Ashleigh on features, Kat and the fab art and subbing team. Thank you – we never stopped laughing (til now!)….
He supplies a picture of a January 2017 “Eat Veg” Waitrose Food issue to show his veggie cred. “We even refused advertising from those proffering meat-based products.”
Yow, an even worse apology. Packed with oxidants. It’d be poison to accept it.
“reiterate” = I already apologized.
“food- and life-loving vegan” = as opposed to vegans who don’t love food, who hate meat just because it is so tasty, and who therefore obviously hate life itself
“genuinely” = most of the people complaining are dishonest show-offs
“private” = why can’t people mind their own business and let me attack freelancers in secrecy?
“widely reported” = this is the damned social media hounding life-loving carnivores like me – like us, because don’t we really all feel like me?
“we never stopped laughing (til now)!” = humorless fucking vegans have ruined everyfuckingthing. Sitwell may never laugh again.
As for the vegetarian issue, that’s interesting – was that experience what turned him against vegans? Why does he claim vegans are hypocrites? While working on the special issue, did he have a series of working lunches with people gnawing on bones with one hand and grabbing bacon sandwiches with the other, while saying he couldn’t run ads that proffered meat?
Hypocrite? Not at all — these boots are synthetic leather.
As for Nelson, to the extent she promotes being a vegan as an environmentally beneficial choice that lessens one’s carbon footprint – which it does – she is vulnerable to the charge that it’s hypocritical for her to aim at a career “travel[ing] the world” to “search for delicious vegan food in every country I visit” as described in her blog “Fork on the Road.” We suspect she takes a lot of flights, emitting greenhouse gases all the way. Yet that didn’t seem to be Sitwell’s issue.
No, he just doesn’t like vegans. He doesn’t like their style (“earnest”). It may have something to do with his curious view that vegans don’t drink. Perhaps the only hope to patch things up is for vegans to take Sitwell on an epic pub crawl.
Having been raised vegetarian, with parents who are now fully vegans who eat mostly unprocessed/raw foods, I know that the diet/lifestyle can seem bewildering (Wait, so no honey…because, why?) and definitely understand that from pushy diet pushers, there does indeed come a deserved hostile blowback. However, I don’t understand how in a professional arena a man who works for a decidedly posh brand like Waitrose thought that was okay? Also, knowing she’s vegan and him saying trapping/killing them would have felt a little… threatening to me. A LOT threatening. I wish she had addressed that directly instead of letting him off the hook with, “oh, hah-hah, that’s cute.”
This. ^^^