After publishing a column ostensibly about the new Volkswagen Passat — but really about how Chattanooga is unbearably hot and smells really, really bad — Automobile Magazine columnist Jamie Kitman might have made himself a few enemies in the Scenic City.
“His tone seems kind of hostile,” my editor observed, before asking me if I wanted to read the column in the magazine’s September edition through my New Yorker lens.
Sure thing.
“… [You] start wondering where you might find a nice, heavy torque bar to smash in your face on account of the ungodly humidity …” Kitman writes about Chattanooga, and all I could do was laugh and nod in agreement. Yes, yes, I know where he’s coming from. I’ve all but tried to climb into my freezer during summers in Chattanooga.
But while his commentary on this area was biting, and there will be some who will take offense, I just found it sharply amusing.