http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-11/bankers-blast-batali-s-stalin-comment-others-demand-leave-mario-alone-.htmlWhen Mario Batali, the New York- based restaurateur and celebrity chef, compared bankers to Hitler and Stalin on Tuesday, the response from patrons of Babbo and Del Posto in the financial industries was swift and furious.
The responses of people farther removed from Batali’s Manhattan bastions of expense-account living were considerably more benign.
“Leave Mario alone!” Sheldon Buckman, a certified public accountant in Boca Raton, Florida, wrote in an e-mail to Bloomberg. “The bankers ARE the evil guys! No matter to whom one compares them.”
“I believe that opinion reflects the majority of Americans these days in how we perceive the banks,” Michael-Patrick Hogue, a Los Angeles-based event producer, wrote in an another e-mail. “I don’t think he should be fried for his opinion.”