Marilyn Hagerty Olive Garden Restaurant Review Goes Viral

The Grand Forks Herald and its food writer Marilyn Hagerty have exploded over the Internet over the last few days when her review of the Olive Garden restaurant in Grand Forks went viral and was picked up by snarky sites like BoingBoig, Fark, and Gawker.  These sites initially seemed intent on making fun of this old lady from a hick town in North Dakota and imposing their "big city' ideals of what being a food critic should entail.  But happily some public outcry came to her defense and tried to shout down the multitude of angry Internet trolls.  

Marilyn is 85 years old and has been associated with the Grand Forks Herald for more than 60 years (her late husband was the editor of the newspaper for many years).  She's a local institution and at 85 is a not only a better writer than most current college graduates, but has been churning out journalism pieces since before you were born (probably).  I hope that my brain is working half as well as hers when I'm 85, and can only imagine churning out 5 newspaper columns a week at any age.

Marilyn is very much the charming matron of Grand Forks, North Dakota.  She's the kindly grandmother who never has a bad word to say about anyone, and this is reflected in her restaurant reviews.  She rarely has a negative comment and can always find the good in anything, a quality that's sorely lacking in our world today.  We see Marilyn frequently at every manner of University of North Dakota sporting events, football, men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball, etc.  She's an enthusiastic and knowledgeable sports fan and very much an icon in the community.  Sure Alycia and I cracked a few jokes when she did her "Eat Beats" review of one of the McDonald's in town (I mean it's McDonald's, what can you say?), but that's Marilyn.

I mentioned Marilyn a couple of years ago here on Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes when she wrote an article about a Minnesota High School's ice fishing team.  

You can read about Internet sensation Marilyn Hagerty at the following:

• Yahoo Article 
• The Original Grand Forks Herald Restaurant Review that started it all. 
• The Grand Forks Herald Article detailing all the fanfare and describing the possible appearances on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, etc. 
• A list from the Grand Forks Herald of all the various mentions across the Internet of Marilyn and her Olive Garden review.