News Flash! Salman Rushdie has found religion, and vows to fight to protect Lakshmi’s honor! The Lakshmi in question, of course, is his wife, Padma Lakshmi, the model/actress/food show hostess/etc extraordinaire.
The whole thing started when Guy Trebay called Padma a “semicelebrated hustler” in his description of Padma’s appearance at NYC’s fashion week: 
This former model, cooking show host and celebrity spouse has seemed to appear at all places and all times during Fashion Week, like an avatar of the Hindu goddess whose name she bears. In the superpopulated Hindu pantheon, Lakshmi is the domestic deity representing wealth and the embodiment of beauty, grace and charm. One of the cool things about the goddess Lakshmi is her unabashed relationship to prosperity. In the current fashion pantheon Ms. Lakshmi similarly stands for a love of money and commodity
Salman did not take kindly to this portrayal of his wife, even though the article actually takes pains to paint her in a positive light compared with some of the lower rungs of the fashion food chain. According to the New York Metro, Salman threatened to personally enforce the penalty for blasphemy:
“Witnesses say Rushdie walked up to Trebay at a National Arts Club event three days later and said, “If you ever write mean things about my wife again, I’ll come after you with a baseball bat.”
The metro goes on to twit Rushdie for being a hypocrite:
Of course, many found it ironic that Rushdie was threatening a writer with bodily harm for something he’d published. He didn’t return messages, and Trebay refused to comment. But a fellow attendee would: “She’s an ambitious person with a lot of hustle. I would think by celebrity standards she’s fair game. Have you seen her Website?â€Â
Rushdie also refuses to comment on reports that he is taking lessons from Sean Penn on how to handle paparazzi.Note: Ms. Lakshmi wishes her public to know that she is not a “Import/Export/Indenting/Steam Coal/Lignite Agent” and would never have a website that read “Abous us” in the left hand column.
rushdie was so out of line; trebay’s article was hardly unkind to PL. he made her sound competent (acrobat sans net) and totally preferable to the D-list, horse-anus-chewing reality show alums who think they are automatically one of the beautiful people, just b/c they were on the idiot box.
methinks the lady doth protest (or inspire it) too much. disappointing and totally hypocritical. rushdie threatens writer b/c he disagrees with his views? what in the world?
I don’t know about that:
You could quite easily read this as calling Lakshmi a dumb, gold-digging, no-talent diva and media whore. Rushdie certainly has little problem with literary decoding. He’s simply defending his wife.
Then there’s the pork reference– Rushdie may not be a practicing Muslim, but he’s certainly familiar with the cultural strictures:
This is a form of defilement. Yes, there are positives in the story, but she’s judged as slightly better than a D-list celebrity, damning with faint praise.
Rushdie has got love on his mind, Padma is one of a kind, Mess with her, He gonna smack you down!
HAHAHA! 🙂 I think I`ve become totally addicted to this website and I need to go into Sepia rehab!
Brown on Brown loving has made Rushdie a real man, just like Naipaul. What is tha voodoo that you desis do? 🙂 I have officially lost my
realBlack mind.Ms World
its not brown on brown loving that makes us hot…Naipaul the Hindu marrying a Pakistani Muslim lady and Rushdie the Muslim marrying an Indian Hindu lady gives that loving an extra taboo-breaking frisson…inter-religious love amongst desi’s is very sexy and I reccomend it to everyone.
Manish
Ummm…threatening to smash someones bones because he said something about his wife? That is a little hypocritical, come on…maybe if the reporter had done it in an allegorical magic-realist style it would be alright, like Rushdie wrote about the Prophets wives in Satanic Verses 🙂
There’s a huge difference between a mythological wife and your living, breathing partner. You wouldn’t stand up for your SO, minus the baseball bat?
Manish
Are the Prophets wives mythological?
Hmmmmm….
I was just joking. Of course its not comparable, but there is much humour to be made at Salman’s expense, considering the offence he caused by writing an allegory in which a character imagines the Prophet’s wives as prostitutes. The journalist should have just written his piece allegorically and called it fiction, and then Salman would have been stumped. Truly, it is hilarious to think of Salman acting gangster, I mean, please, what the journalist wrote was not deserving of a threat of violence.
Manish, it’s Padma herself, shilling her book, who said that the recipes she was testing left her hair smelling like pork tenderloin.
Trebay’s point is that while PM markets herself assiduously, she’s genuine, and is actually worth it:
You’re right that she comes off smelling more like pork than roses, but in the world of models and self-branding, his description of her is actually as positive as it’s gonna get.
“…inter-religious love amongst desi’s is very sexy and I reccomend it to everyone : I second that. Especially when one of or both of the parents happen to be bigots.
Good man that Rushdie. I am sure he was well-taken cared when the lights went out, for those remarks ;).
I wish Kerry had balls to say that to bad mouths who wrote about his wife.
come ON. with a baseball bat? who does he think he is? a friend of tony soprano? there are more dignified ways to express rage, wrath and displeasure. “i think you’re an asshole” would’ve been better than threatening physical violence. if i’m going to rail at a DJ for saying “i’ll choke the fuck out of you”, to an innocent indian call center worker, i’m going to have to apply the same intolerant standard here.
fine, rushdie was defending his maiden’s honour, so it’s not exactly analogous to power99…but i’m not going to back down from my assertion that he should’ve known better, and acted more like the class act i thought he was. it takes far more grey matter to decimate someone with words– and if ANYONE could’ve risen to such a challenge, it’s rushdie.
and as for kerry…sure, he could have done the same. why NOT add one more campaign fuck-up to his glorious list?
/end indignant rant
You know what bugs me is that he said he was going to beat him up with a baseball bat. Why not with a cricket bat? I’ve always suspected that he writes for the west about the east. An authentic Indian writer would have said cricket bat. Word.
Agree. I don’t of course support the threat of physical violence here. But to those who say there was no provocation, I’ve got to wonder whether we read the same story. To swipe a Chris Rock line, ‘I’m not sayin’ he shoulda [done it], I’m sayin’ I understaaand…’
Out of context, it’s innocent. But in the context of Lakshmi-bashing, highlighting this specific remark could be read by a protective, culturally Muslim husband as a stylized dig. Imagine if you were married, someone had inserted backhands at your Sikh wife and had then specifically complimented her cut hair.
Hardly. Lakshmi usually gets much more fawning press:
The Vina character is another of Rushdie’s idealized women, a strong, strikingly beautiful diva whose last name was Apsara, meaning divine nymph.
Think of this as the literary version of a rap feud, only instead of firing away via snarky commentary on the pages of The New Yorker, Rushdie went medieval on his ass.
Sometimes pork tenderloin smell is just that, pork tenderloin smell. Most Indians (from India ) do not eat pork. I don’t think pork is a loaded word because no one eats it. As opposed to mentioning beef when talking about Indian Hindus. But then again the writer would not know that.
But at least he didn’t say her hair had Indian Food Smell. Now, that sh#t would’ve been racist, and that’s an automatic ass-whoopin, with a cricket bat of course.
Oh come on! She’s a public figure, and the article mainly describes her behavior. Should Carly Fiorina’s husband go apeshit over what gets written about her? Mr. Thatcher have gone medieval on anybody who mocked Maggie? Kevin Federline on anybody who writes about Britney’s antics?
These are public figures, the criticism is dead to rights, and it’s even praising her as the best amongst a bunch of self-promoters. She self-promotes, but gives value and consideration. She actually buys things, and dresses herself. The writer thought she played the game well.
If all that comes out of your mouth are product placements, you can’t get upset when somebody calls you on it. This is like Madonna getting upset.
[As for the pork thing, I really don’t think it was a slam – the words were from her, and I doubt the writer thought things through (moreover, Salman probably eats pork if she cooks it)]
No, Salman was mad that his wife got publically exposed as being a personal brand, and threatened violence against somebody for the content of his writing. That makes me lose respect for him.
The facts don’t support this. Authors with a taste for publicity (Rushdie did massive amounts of publicity on his recent India trips) aren’t offended by being called self-promoters. They’re offended when their wives are called C-list hustlers.
awww, manish…your rabid “loyalty” to padma makes me think you’d pull a rushdie on anyone who dissed your date.
MEOW. massively attractive, you hot-blooded knight in shining Benzer. 😉
Well, C-list was your description, but it’s accurate. I mean, she doesn’t have the Q-rating to be either A-list or B-list.
The writer does call her a hustler, but it’s in this context:
He’s complimenting her on her savvy! People say that about Madonna all the time!
As for having “no problem making public an inventory of brands she chooses to wear to fashion shows” he backs that right up:
If you don’t like people calling you a duck, stop quacking so loudly.
Trebay sure sounds like he’s saying she married Rushdie for his money.
Hustle is a compliment. Hustler is most definitely not.
Anyhow, I’m glad you don’t perceive obvious smackdowns easily. It’ll keep you blissful, and save me from a well-deserved beating 😉
😀
More on Trebay as a journalist. The guy has been nominated for a Pulitzer, and has won multiple other prizes.
My last remark – it’s funny that you see insults between the lines (like the fact that she was cooking pork tenderloin) but ignore the direct complements that Trebay gives PL …
First, this is totally irrelevant. You might as well drag in Rushdie’s celebrated literary history.
Second, he’s a culture writer, not a news reporter. Anybody who writes on entertainment for the Voice, the New Yorker and the NYT is going to be off the charts on snark.
It’s lipstick on a pig. ‘She’s a C-list hustler, but she does it well’ is far from a compliment.
You forget that when Pakistanis made a movie urging that he be assassinated, Rushdie personally intervened to get it uncensored. And he’s spoken out for artistic freedom countless times.
This is not a matter of artistic freedom, this is a matter of personal honor. He lost his head, and he shouldn’t have threatened physical harm, but he’s well within reason to be upset.
In light of the ‘pork tenderloin’ comments above, the ‘lipstick on a pig’ analogy is quite apropos.
Thank goodness Trebay didn’t call Padma Lakshmi a “fashion whore” or say that she was “all pimped out” Rushdie might have really lost it.
I love the way that Rushdie says “If you ever write mean things about my wife again.” Rushdie has a huge vocabulary so his comment was quite revealing. He could have said don’t you dare insult her honor, don’t call her a gold digging whore. Instead he pointed out exactly what was bothering him – that somebody was mean to her. Heaven forbid Padma Lakshmi ever gets a bad review …
If you can’t stand the snark (without screaming at people and getting violent) stay away from the fashion pages and … don’t read Sepia Mutiny.
Me thinks Rushdie has now reverted to Islam and will do anything to protect the izzat (honor) of his wife.