<![CDATA[Gawker: wilber hardee]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: wilber hardee]]> http://gawker.com/tag/wilberhardee http://gawker.com/tag/wilberhardee <![CDATA[Spelling Mystery Behind Hardee Obit]]> Setting aside the health implications of fast-food pioneer Wilber Hardee's death at the advanced age of 89, one is drawn to the mystery of his first name. No one seems to know how to spell it. The Times went with "Wilber" for its obit. But hey, Times, how about fact-checking your journalism with that most august and reliable of primary sources, the Hardee's Cool Kids website? As show above and to the right, it renders the name "Wilbur," as do about 3,140 Web pages in Google's index in an exact-phrase search, vs. just 1,510 for "Wilber." And "Wilbur" also wins in a Google News search, with 54 uses (including AP!) vs. just "about 10" for "Wilbur." But wait, there are so many more wrinkles to this obit mystery!

Isn't the company info page on the main Hardees.com site a better source of intelligence than the Hardee's Cool Kids website? It has the name as "Wilber," as shown at top and on the left. So even the guy's own company can't figure out the right spelling.

UPDATE: But the main company press release has it as "Wilbur." Aghhhhh!

UPDATE2: (The company press release also gives a date of birth one year earlier than that given by the Times.)

Maybe everyone at Hardee's is so used to just selecting hamburger and french fry icons on those touch-screen ordering stations that they've forgotten how to properly write.

The most fascinating possibility comes from the website Dos Factotum, which theorizes that Hardee might have swung both ways, name-wise. Kinky! But is anyone ever, truly, bi? Maybe Wilbur just couldn't accept that he was really "Wilber," because of, you know, society.

[Dos Factotum]

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5020136&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Five Deaths That Prove You Should Eat Fast Food]]> Picture 8-23Neatly encapsulating the prevailing foodie conventional wisdom, science-fearing New York Times contributor Michael Pollan has famously advised America to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He also believes we should eat like our ignorant, backward ancestors ("Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food") instead of like modern human beings. But as regular Gawker readers know, heavily-processed, contemporary American fast food has preserved an inordinate number of its inventors and purveyors well past any reasonable life expectancy. This morning's Times brings word of the death of hamburger chain founder Wilber Hardee at the ripe old age of 89. Granted, he was felled by a heart attack. But he joins no fewer than four other fast food pioneers who have kicked the bucket over the past six months at extraordinarily advanced ages:

We left out Popeye's Fried Chicken founder Al Copeland, 64, who died of "malignant salivary gland tumor" in March. But he didn't do too badly at all, especially, as our own Hamilton Nolan pointed out, "for a man with a lifetime diet of fried chicken!" (Ahem.)

So there you go — irrefutable, scientific proof that you not only can but probably should load up on cheeseburgers, ice cream, french fries and hot dogs throughout the summer and really for the rest of your life. Hold the guilt!

[Times]

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