What is this article?

[Content Note: Classism; racism.]

Actual Headline: "Heat or eat? Bitter winter forces unique cuts."

Unique cuts? Making a choice between food and warmth constitutes a "unique cut"?

Ha ha don't worry—it's not really about people who are making a choice between eating and staying warm. It's about people with the "first world problems" (actually used in the article) of "canceling vacations, shelving clothes shopping, and even—horror of horrors—buying cheap wine."

"Dinners out? What IS that?!" asks Susie Quick, a resident of Midway, Ky., who is purposely injecting a chill into her home and her spending due to a monthly power bill that's leaped from $90 to $300. Several southern states recently have shivered through the lowest temperatures in years.

"I walk around my house like a lumberjack in layers of silk underwear, plaid flannel shirt, down vest, scarf, hat, sweater leggings and furry faux UGGs. I only wish I could grow a beard for added warmth," said Quick, who lives on a horse and cow farm, and who works as a medical editor at the University of Kentucky. Her house is electrically heated.

On recent nights, she's been allowing her 45-pound coonhound and two cats to sleep with her — "if there was room for my horse, I'd bring him in, too." As for food, she's a "non-elective vegan" but said she can't afford "pricey" fake meat like tofu hot dogs and tempeh burgers. Instead, she dines on rice and beans, and greens. Going to a hair salon is too expensive so she's become "my own amateur hair stylist and colorist and I'm really afraid it shows."

"I have three rooms shut off with towels down at the door bottoms to prevent drafts. My furniture is also lumberjack-chic and covered in blankets and throws. I refuse to succumb to a Snuggie, though a Thuggie has appeal. So House Beautiful this is not," said Quick, who refers to her heating bills as "hate mail."

A Thuggie (which is a cross between a hoodie and a blanket) has appeal. Of course it does.

Listen, having your heating bill triple is not nothing. This horrendo FuckWinter is costing us money beyond what we budget, too: We're having to run the heat a lot more and keep water running to avoid the pipes freezing, which would create an even bigger cost. But people (including Iain and me) who can afford the increase by cutting back a bit are not making the choice between heat or eat. For fuck's sake.

There are lots of people across the US who are really making that incredibly difficult choice—a choice no one should ever have to make, especially in the richest country on the planet.

Not every article has to be about every thing, and I know lots of rich white people need to see their suffering reflected in the media as often as possible, ahem, so publish the fucking article if you must, NBC News, but don't give it a headline that mocks the real choice between sustenance and warmth that lots of people have to make.

Also: This was the same outlet who last week offered up a piece of shit article about fatties shivering away the pounds, about which I said: "I...find it particularly gross to run this article at a time when many people in the country are struggling to stay warm. I don't want to read this shit at all, no less when I am reading stories in the local papers about families who lost homes (and sometimes lives) trying to stay warm with a space heater."

Rinse and repeat.