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Say "Top Chef" and you think fabulous and imaginative cuisine, not children going hungry.
Think "Real Housewives of Orange County" and you probably envision homes behind "the gates," not whether there are housewives who have any house at all.
And "surreal" is the word that comes to mind when reality TV and celebrity collide, but that's happening with two notables who are trying to make a difference for hard-working families who do the best they can, but are still struggling to provide.
Top Chef head judge Tom Colicchio has been front and center on news shows recently advocating for federal legislation to make the country's school lunch program better, especially for the innumerable children for whom that meal is their only decent one of the day. Some conservatives are fighting against Colicchio because they think the government shouldn't have to feed undernourished kids -- hey, hunger is a motivator, according to one lawmaker!
They never needed free lunches to provide good nutrition in their day, by golly! At least that's what uber-right-winger Pat Buchanan tried to tell Chef Tom on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Colicchio is seriously my new hero for slapping Buchanan down (in a polite talk show sort of way, of course -- check out the video at about 14 minutes in) reminding him that government food programs have been around since at least World War II, notwithstanding Buchanan's "I never needed a handout in my day" philosophy.
Top Chef isn't the only Bravo show getting a nod in the name of activism this summer. If you think everything in The O.C. is all glamour and riches, filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi (yes, she's the daughter of that Pelosi) has made a new documentary for HBO entitled Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County that tells the story of the working poor who can't scrape enough together to live anywhere but unsafe transient motels -- making them homeless. It looks like Pelosi is a newly minted Mother of Intention, saying that many of these children are also lining up at soup kitchens because there's not enough money for rent and food.
In an interview on the HBO site, Pelosi laments that the truly sad takeaway from her film is that there may not be a happy ending for many of these children who represent the one in 50 in our country who are homeless. I bet Tom Colicchio would say the same thing about the 1 in 6 kids who are obese because of bad nutrition that comes from poverty or the close to 17 million children who go to bed hungry.
When Pelosi also appeared on Morning Joe, she was challenged about using her position as the daughter of the Speaker of the House to raise the profile of those less fortunate, and was asked whether people would criticize her for having an "agenda."
Her reply was, to paraphrase, what's wrong with having an agenda to help end homelessness for children and raise everyone's awareness of just how many families who are working 40 hours a week or more can't put a roof over the heads of their families or food on the table?
I couldn't have asked a better question myself.
Image via Kat Johnston/Flickr
Joanne Bamberger writes weekly for The Stir here at Speaker of the House. Check out her earlier columns and what she's getting all punidt-y about at her place, PunditMom!
Comments (3)
Oh, DH and I just had a big ole fight about this the other night. It appears that I lean left, and suddenly he's willing to go ultra right. I don't want kids to go hungry. I want there to be a safety net. He said that all the social programs should end. I managed to remain calm.
I didn't know I was capable of "leaning left". He said I was "too liberal". I told him to stop listening to Rush on the way to work, he'd lost his ability to think for himself. couldn't believe I said that.
He even said that there shouldn't be public schools. It's not the governments job to educate... and i was like, wait a minute...
I don't like the way the country is headed. In an effort to stop the left from moving left, the right is moving furthur right, and isn't the reality that most people fall somewhere in the middle?
Would we really choose hungry children over gov?
The answer was, of course, community would step in. Really? For sure?
ah, I guess, I do lean left on this one. Maybe that's ok.
Welcome to the left! ;) I understand it's important to keep government spending under control, but if we, as a nation, don't have an obligation to feed and educate our children,and make sure they heave health care when they're sick, where does that leave us?
I would like to know where those numbers come from, first. I recently saw an American Idol person espousing a charity which is devoted to providing lunches for all the millions of children who "go hungry" merely because school is not in session, so they don't get their free lunch at school. As far as I could tell, they were assuming that since the children qualified for free lunch throughout the school year, they received absolutely NO food during the summer. It just seemed a bit over-dramatic to me. As well as presumptuous. Where DO the numbers come from? Who determines how many children go hungry each day?