An Unhelpful Article -- the Virginia Governor's Chef

You see on Google News a headline indicating that the chef of the current Virginia governor has had to leave his job and is under investigation.

It is several days before you click on the link, because meanwhile you've spent that time trying to think of what anybody's chef could possibly do that would lead to him being investigated and leaving his job, but the closest you can get is recalling that Mrs. Bridges, the cook in the British hit period drama of the 1970's, "Upstairs Downstairs," was at one point suspected of some wrong-doing concerning the buying of the groceries. So you finally go to the article, which you expect to tell all.

But when you reach the end of the article, which consists of no less than 24 paragraphs of various lengths, you are dismayed to find that you still know absolutely none of the true or false nitty-gritty about why the governor's chef had to speak sayonara. Instead all you've learned is that the investigation has been going on for a while and that the details have been kept a closely guarded secret, a la nuclear weapons, and that apparently the case involves irregularities in "kitchen management." So then you realize that mainly you've just plowed through a large amount of expert padding, consisting mainly of mentions of the chef's fabulous doings before he came to the mansion in Richmond, among which one of the most remarkable was that he got to go backstage during a Lady Gaga performance. Apparently being admitted backstage during a Lady Gaga performance is considered to be close to the very top of human achievement.

One runs into so many internet articles that totally fail to deliver on the promises implied in their titles that it almost seems to be reaching for the norm, but this one gets my vote as being an outstandingly unhelpful article, and its author or authors are to be congratulated.