Is a hot dog a sandwich?
The great debate over whether a hotdog is a sandwich reached new levels this week when a Louisville newspaper issued a correction for "incorrectly" referring to hot dogs as sandwiches ten times over a period of decades.
On Wednesday, which happened to be National Hotdog Day, the Courier-Journal, noted that the paper referred to hot dogs as sandwiches 10 times, beginning in 1887 and ending in 1966.
"Among those errors were references to a frankfurter sausage sandwich, frankfurter sandwich, coney island sandwich, frankfurter sandwich with mustard, and, the most egregious, a frankfurter sandwich with catchup (ketchup, anyone?)," the Courier-Journal wrote. "We deeply regret the errors, especially that last one."
The Executive Editor at the Courier-Journal, which is part of the USA TODAY Network, tweeted that the paper was prompted to issue the corrections because it is "deadly serious about accuracy."
We're deadly serious about accuracy at @courierjournal. pic.twitter.com/t3xDKVcWRq
— Joel Christopher (@j_christo) July 20, 2017
And hot-dog gate did not end there.
Courier-Journal Columnist Joseph Gerth called the corrections and the very notion that a hot dog is not a sandwich "fake news."
Gerth noted that his boss "went against years of convention and bought into the powerful weiner-industry lobby's hype and decided that a hot dog is not, in fact, a sandwich."
"A sandwich is nothing more than bread and some sort of filling — sometimes peanut butter, or egg salad, or even watercress — and any accompanying condiments or vegetables," he wrote. "...Unless you’re one of those food snobs who argues that hot dogs aren’t really meat, it’s impossible to say it’s anything but a sandwich."
As Gerth notes the question of whether a hot dog is a sandwich or not has been divisive for years, and attempts to settle the score have popped up countless times.
In 2015, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council concluded that a hot dog is not a sandwich. A year later Merriam-Webster tweeted in opposition, saying simply "the hot dog is sandwich."
Have a great #MemorialDayWeekend. The hot dog is a sandwich. https://t.co/KeNiTAxPAm
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) May 27, 2016
"We know: the idea that a hot dog is a sandwich is heresy to some of you. But given that the definition of a sandwich is 'two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between,' there is no sensible way around it.'" the dictionary said in a statement.
Frankly, this debate is going nowhere.
