Anthony Bourdain is a tourist dork

[Above: The offending ad.]

OK, I'm sure Anthony Bourdain isn't really a tourist dork, but I do take issue with the magazine advertisement for his new Travel Channel show, Without Reservations, which features the tagline "Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist".

For starters, the traveler/tourist dichotomy has long been one of the most insipid obsessions of the travel world (since, as peripatetic guests in foreign places, we are all tourists, regardless of what we wear, where we eat, and which guidebook we use) -- and to imply that one can shed the "tourist" mantle by watching a television show is positively idiotic.

Moreover, in the ad, Bourdain is shown clutching a red magic-marker in front of an aerial photograph of Paris, presumably having just scribbled little morsels of wisdom into the margins, such as: "Hungry? The Royal, a typical Parisian café, is a mandatory staple in the daily routine of the Parisian. No tourists here!"

Though there is much to ponder in such a reductive statement ("the daily routine of the Parisian" -- what is this, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom?), the "no tourists" part is what gets me, since the surest way to send "tourists" stampeding into any café or restaurant is to declare it untouristed. Ernest Hemingway knew as much 80 years ago, when he was a part of the Paris expat scene. "We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island," he wrote in The Sun Also Rises. "It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women's Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table."

Though I've never read any of Bourdain's books, his interview persona seems to be commonsense, levelheaded and well informed. In this interview with Powells.com, Bourdian downplays pretension, confesses his own limitations as a food expert, praises "bullshit-free" destinations like Glasgow, and expresses an intention to travel "with an open mind, an empty stomach, and a willingness to take at face value whatever was offered" from his hosts. "I hope that by leaving myself open to misadventure, disaster, and the happy accident," he says, "good things will happen. I'm not afraid to look like an idiot."

That kind of talk makes a lot more sense to me than haughtily presuming to turn people into "travelers" by dishing out travel bon mots on television. Let's hope the Travel Channel ad was the brainchild of some clueless marketing whiz, and not Bourdain himself.