FoxSo, who's out of line now?
Not Gordon Ramsay.
But wasn't it just days ago the suicide death of New Jersey chef Joseph Cerniglia was all but pinned on Ramsay's hotheaded Kitchen Nightmares persona?
Wasn't Exhibit A the fact that Cerniglia was on Kitchen Nightmares? Wasn't Exhibit B the double fact that Cerniglia was yelled at by Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares?
And wasn't Top Chef judge Eric Ripert's expert tweet-imony the clincher? (Chided Ripert: Ramsay is "very wrong.")
Sure. It all made for an airtight indictment of Ramsay, not to mention reality TV.
Until, that is, the rest of the imperfect story came along: Cerniglia's drug problems; Cerniglia's personal problems; Cerniglia's problems with almost everything but Ramsay and his TV show.
Now, before we rush to judgment and conclude that Cerniglia leaped to his death because the married but separated man was dating his pastry chef, let's just admit: We don't know. We don't why Cerniglia committed suicide.
And neither did anyone who was tsk-tsking Ramsay.
Yesterday, after the first reports of Cerniglia's troubled life surfaced, Ripert returned to Twitter. "For the record," he wrote, "my comments on Ramsay were not related to the recent tragedy…"
Are we going to express disbelief that Ripert just happened to have lit into Ramsay on the same day Cerniglia's death was reported?
No.
We're going to give Ripert the benefit of the doubt that it seems some didn't give a certain under-fire star.
As for the last word? We're going to give that to Curtis Stone, late of Celebrity Apprentice, who said of Ramsay to E! News: "We were old mates and worked together a long time ago in London. I know him and I don't wanna kill myself."
—Additional reporting by Cristina Gibson