In the most famous line from her controversial Times Magazine M.I.A. profile — “‘I kind of want to be an outsider,’ she said, eating a truffle-flavored French fry” — Lynn Hirschberg intimates that M.I.A.’s highfalutin taste in potato-based side dishes runs counter to her radical politics. Does it really, though? Village Voice food critic Robert Sietsema weighs in: “They’re uniformly awful … M.I.A. was showing her lack of culinary sophistication by eating anything called truffle-flavored fries (and, later, by refusing a photographer’s offer of wonderful Sri Lankan rice pudding!), and Hirschberg her own lack of culinary sophistication by thinking that truffle-flavored fries were effete. This is the kind of misunderstanding that always occurs when two non-foodies get together for an interview.” [Sound of the City/VV]
