These sound like fighting words around here

It goes like this: You're sitting at a large picnic in early summer—plastic forks, burgers, corn in your teeth—when someone leaves the table and returns with a large pan. "I brought a pie," he says, setting it down in front of you. A spatula emerges. People coo. This is the start of an unpleasant afternoon.
 
The pie, because it is a pie, does not so much "slice" as volcanically erupt under the pressure of the knife, oozing its livid fluid everywhere; your own piece, when it comes, is a miniature apocalypse of broken pastry parts and heat-blitzed fruit. You demur, mumbling about having eaten too much cornbread. Someone's aging, wild-eyed mother stares you down. "It's pie," she says. You are handed a fork. You start to peck at a morsel of fruit. Your plate is promptly whisked away again: Because it's hot outside, you're told, you're supposed to enjoy your dessert "a la mode." The pie is warm; the ice cream melts at once. You contemplate what now looks like a slice of jammy toast that has been soaked in milk for half a day and masticated by a dog. You work your fork into the only structure still intact, the woody, crenulated crust, beating and twisting this bumper of dough against each leverageable surface on your plate, trying to break it up. Your fork loses a prong. Abandoning all hope, you finally drive your broken-fork-with-giant-crust-piece through the mire of sloppy dough and heft the entire, dripping mass into your mouth. "Mmm," someone says. "Isn't it so great to have pie?"

 
The rest of this drivel is here.

I read the article and it would appear Mr. Heller either has a dry run in his topics for articles or has an awful lot of free time on his hands to make an issue out of nothing. Bottom line, despite his contrived diatribe against pie, one issue remains in his opening thesis. It's called being ungrateful. If someone should think and care enough of a gathering to prepare something they feel that would be of enjoyment by the others, and a patent ingrate should gripe about it and the hospitality of another, then people like that should be castigated by the group and no longer be invited. It's not a matter if you like something or not. It's a matter of respect for your host or the feelings of those that contribute.

I hate pies at a picnic, when they have 4 and 20 Blackbirds in them...the King can go to hell!

I don't think it's that big a deal. Some people simply don't like pie, no matter where it's served. If I was a guest somewhere and someone insisted I eat pie, particularly apple pie a'la mode (my most hated dessert), I would hope they didn't invite me back. It has never been rude to decline to eat something someone offers to serve you, and it has always been rude to insist to the point of castigation someone eat something they have already politely refused for whatever reason. I mean, good lord...with obesity what it is and food allergies what they are, how ignorant to do you have to be to force someone to eat something they obviously do not want?
 
That said, the article itself is assinine, but the point is valid.

I think i know where this guy got his motivation.  Because of language I won't post the link.  But if you youtube  Curb Your Enthusiasm - Larry doesn't want any pie 

I just think it was a pointless article and a waste of words.

This article is the sad merger of an editor demanding an article be written and a writer who is in love with his own voice but has nothing to say.
 
How's that for eloquence?  Clearly, I'm not qualified to work at Slate.
 
Buddy

Buddy-excellent assessment!!! I was almost a journalist ( in a past life) and that was just sad...