Wine snobbery a fraud? Who could have possibly guessed?

Everyone on the internet loves it when traditional media gets pwned as the kids like to say. Via Jason (my job is surfing the internet, suckers) Kottke, comes this gem, where a fake restaurant submits a wine list of wines that Wine Spectator previously panned to Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence paid listing and won an award. Stories like this happen all the time, and studies about how wine snobs "palates" are not nearly as refined as they claim are a dime a dozen. You can read about it here on the Freakanomics blog, or read about Frédéric Brochet's test of "wine experts" via Jonah Lehrer's blog. I link to Jonah Lehrer all the time because the Frontal Cortex blog is always fascinating. The bottom line is don't fill your magazine with recommendations that people bought with cash. It makes you look like a bunch of disingenuous dicks.