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Kelly Hagen's Column

Hagerty: the food critic who conquered cynicism

Written by: Kelly Hagen

Marilyn Hagerty went viral. Before she did, she had no clue what “going viral” meant. And after it happened, she did not seem to care.

Just so we’re clear, Hagerty is the so-very-long-time columnist at the Grand Forks Herald. She writes five columns a week, and is still somehow classified as “retired.” One of those columns is called Eatbeat, and in it, she writes what has to be the state’s only regular food criticism column.  

She eats anywhere and everywhere – Pizza Ranch, Wendy’s, Toasted Frog, etc. – in Grand Forks or wherever she happens to be, and she writes reviews. She’s been writing the thing for a long time – 30 or 40 years, she says. And she has the absolute best perspective on writing, which any newspaper columnist should probably consider crocheting onto a doily and hanging over their desk: “Some people don’t like it, some people do like it, blah, blah, blah.”

About a month ago, an Eatbeat column she’d written about Grand Forks’ new Olive Garden went viral. One Internet cynic reposted it on their blog for laughs, and then another one did it, and the ball kept rolling down the hill, gaining steam, until Hagerty’s piece was on the Yahoo front page.

That’s when you know you’ve really made it. When Yahoo pays attention.

Why did she go viral, though? Nobody really knows how to go viral, otherwise everybody would be doing it all the time, and they’d probably criminalize the action, lest the Internet explode. It takes a very specific recipe of talent, ability or just complete happenstance to get what Hagerty achieved.

If I may be so bold, I think the first wave of publicity was people laughing at her, and laughing at all North Dakotans, because we like Olive Garden. It’s a chain, and it’s very common, and it’s therefore unworthy of a food critic’s review, according to the rules of the Internet.

Hagerty didn’t get that memo. All she did was write a straight-faced column about the experience of eating at an Olive Garden, and all the Internet nerds tried to shut her down. And it might have worked, if it had been anyone else but Hagerty.

The only way to beat a cynic is to be even more cynical than they, and I guarantee you, there are no greater cynics walking this Earth than 40-year veterans of newspapers.

I don’t know Hagerty, but I was fortunate enough to work alongside a great man named John Peterson at a different paper. He’d worked in newspapers for decades and decades, to the point that nobody really knew when he started or where he came from. Peterson did not begin or end, he just was. And, reading what Hagerty has said to the press about her experience, she strikes me as the Peterson type.

There is no feedback you can level at the newspaper veteran that will phase them. Praise, criticism, whatever, they’ve heard it all, over and over and over. And they’re at the point where they literally do not care what you think. They barely know what the Internet is; all they care about is making deadline and getting home to play some bridge.

Peterson was my hero, and now, so is Marilyn.

So, after a month of Marilyn mania, I think it’s safe to say that she’s singlehandedly conquered the Internet. She’s touring New York City, talking to Anderson Cooper. She’s got a book deal. She’s received a hailstorm of publicity, and stood her ground the whole time. She wrote about Olive Garden, and she does not care if you like it. Blah, blah, blah.

-Columnist Kelly Hagen likes the sound of that word, “retirement.” Meanwhile, he can be reached at kelly.hagen@gmail.com, or view his comparatively pitiful five years of output at www.sohagen.com.

 

 

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