At National Review Online, Julie Gunlock lights into Alice Waters and her food movement, saying that it's phony and elitist, etc.
John Schwenkler to the rescue. Excerpt:
Is it really that impossible to wrap one's mind around the idea that, just as there might be genuine relationships of superiority and inferiority among ways of life or novels or works of art or music, so the same might hold for what we eat? Can it be true that the very same movement that gives us the classicism of the New Criterion and George Will's case against blue jeans is unable to recognize that our meals might also be part of what constitutes our lives as noble or, as the case may be, not? The "purpose of food", writes Gunlock, "is nourishment" - but of course while that may be true enough for dogs and cats and horses, it's no more true in our case than it is that the purpose of sex is procreation, the purpose of architecture providing shelter, or the purpose of music passing the time. Would the world really end if we allowed considerations other than wants and the almighty dollar to impact our choices about what we bring to our table?
The idea that, as Gunlock puts it, "the purpose of food is nourishment" really is an impoverished way to experience the world. It is the aesthetic that finds no difference between Kool-Aid and Veuve Clicquot -- the purpose of ingesting liquid is to slake thirst -- or between a TV dinner and the simple meal of sauteed greens my wife made me last night from vegetables she grew in her own kitchen garden. Why is it that your average French factory worker likely has more appreciation for the value of well-made food than some elite American conservative opinion journalists?
Whatever may justifiably be said against foodie elitism -- and Schwenkler has attacked that (I just wish Christopher Guest would go after foodie crazies like he did obsessive dog fanciers in "Best In Show") -- it never fails to amaze me that American conservatives make a virtue of culinary philistinism. I mean, look, I don't care for opera or ballet, but I wouldn't wear my lack of interest in those important aspects of high culture as a badge of pride. If conservative populism means despising excellence, count me out.
Along those lines, E.D. Kain asks in a post about the unwatchability of conservative media:
Why have conservatives let go of the high culture war? Why have they conceded defeat there - in the arts, in literature, in music - trading it instead for trash television and cheap rhetoric?
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" "the purpose of food is nourishment" really is an impoverished way to experience the world."
Fine. But that's not the point Gunlock was making. Nor is this the key to the criticism of Waters.
Perhaps better stated it would read "the FIRST purpose of food is nourishment." Once you're economically in a place that can go beyond that, it would be nice if people were to explore food more. But Alice Waters in her 60 minutes appearance repeatedly suggested that anyone could live like she does. Anyone could buy $4/pound grapes. Anyone could spend 40 minutes making breakfast every day. And that's just nonsense.
But the real criticism of Waters is the same criticism of so many liberals - her real goal is to tell everyone else what to do. To tell everyone else how they must eat, how they must live, the choices they must make or they're BAD.
I've read Tolstoy. I listen to Bach. I'm a vegetarian. I've been to Alice Waters' restaurant and enjoyed it. That doesn't mean I agree with her trying to badger everyone else into living her way.
Rod,
You don't have to go to the ballet or opera to live or be happy. You do, however, have to eat and Alice Watters- I suspect- would have us only eat food made in a speficic and expensive manner, if it were up to her.
Frankly, the Obamas really do fit the profile of upper class liberal professionals...
I thought class warfare was the bailiwick of leftist commies.
And it's not at all racist to object to, criticize, or even attack the Obamas.
Separating the world by race is racist, and the whole "White People" rant by which you mean "upper class liberal professionals" (apparently upper class conservative professionals are other than "White People") is an exercise in racism. How could it be otherwise?
Now I've worked with "White People," self-declared Rednecks, actually. Proud Rednecks. Funny-as-hell salt-of-the-earth Rednecks. One of those Rednecks bought me my first Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit with a sweet tea for breakfast a few years back...yum! And guess what? They like soft cheese with white wine, they like organic produce and grass-fed beef, they shop at Whole Foods. And they all voted Republican in four of the last five presidential elections...I won't tell you which four.
Some people like quantity, some people like quality The difference has nothing to do with class or race, nothing to do with region or culture, it has to do with personal preference. It's about personal choice, something conservatives applauded before Limbaugh became the "Conscience of a Conservative."
An excellent defense of the NRO piece:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/
Eating Strawmen [Ramesh Ponnuru]
These attacks by Rod Dreher and John Schwenkler on (my friend) Julie Gunlock are just silly. (Schwenkler’s is also unparodiably condescending, as when he compares Gunlock to his putatively dimwitted and shallow students.) Gunlock didn’t deny that some foods are better than others, and she didn’t criticize Alice Waters for denying it. The notion that Gunlock is an enemy of “culinary excellence” is, for anyone who has enjoyed one of her meals, preposterous. Now it is true that Gunlock’s criticism of Waters sits uncomfortably with Schwenkler’s claim that it is somehow a matter of objective moral truth that “if you’re lucky enough to face the choice between grass-fed beef and cable TV it’s probably the latter that ought to go.” But that’s just not the same thing.
Schwenkler then continues with a strawman parade. Noting that he has criticized Waters before, he adds, “It’s one thing, though, to raise criticisms of the way a message is being delivered, and quite another to use those criticisms as a tool for clumsily bludgeoning that message’s content. Grunlock (sic) of all people should be sensitive to the need to choose one’s words carefully … and NR, for that matter, shouldn’t lose sight of the possibility that attention to taste and respect for the wisdom of the past might have something to teach us about how we ought to eat.”
Gunlock didn’t say, and I very much doubt she believes, that we shouldn’t pay “attention to taste” or have “respect for the wisdom of the past” with respect to eating. (Nor, incidentally, does publishing one piece on NRO signal an editorial endorsement of the contents of that piece, any more than publishing Dreher’s original crunchy-con manifesto as an NR cover story put us behind all of his notions.) If Schwenkler’s comment means that only members of his crunchy-con club are allowed to venture criticisms of foodie celebrities—well, what was that about “clumsy bludgeoning”?
$4 a pound for grapes is expensive. But if we're using anecdotal evidence to prove a point, allow me to share this. At a locally owned grocery store within a bike ride of my house, I bought a pint of local, organic half and half for $2.09. When I bring the reusable glass bottle back to the store, I get $1.50 back. That's $0.59 for a pint of half and half. Non-organic, non-local half and half at the big chain supermarket is $1.49
If we can agree that there is something wrong with Americans' diet, than we can agree that it needs to be changed. I applaud Alice Waters for having the courage to speak her mind and be a voice for change. I encourage people who disagree with her to form alternative solutions.
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