Lee, 

Really glad you mentioned Michael Pollan's review of Julie and Julia http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=Julie%20and%20Julia&st=cse&scp=3-D... He's a gifted, entertaining writer with incredible CONTENT, too... A great read all on it's own.

But it also just hit me, when reading the following snippets on page 4 of his article, that if you swapped in "democracy" for Pollan's "cooking" language, it's an exact description of our political culture, too! 

E.g.:

<snip>   The historical drift of cooking programs — from a genuine interest in producing food [democracy]yourself to the spectacle of merely consuming it — surely owes a lot to the decline of cooking [political participation] in our culture, but it also has something to do with the gravitational field that eventually overtakes anything in television’s orbit. <snip>

 

<snip>   Buying  [buying! politicians and policy], not making [making! politicians and policy], is what cooking shows are mostly now about —     <snip>

 

<snip>   The Food Network [political tee vee] has helped to transform cooking [democracy] from something you do into something you watch — into yet another confection of spectacle and celebrity that keeps us pinned to the couch. The formula is as circular and self-reinforcing as a TV dinner: a simulacrum of home cooking that is sold on TV and designed to be eaten in front of the TV. True, in the case of the Swanson rendition, at least you get something that will fill you up; by comparison, the Food Network leaves you hungry, a condition its advertisers must love. But in neither case is there much risk that you will get off the couch and actually cook a meal.    <snip>

 

 

Time to take our kitchens AND OUR COUNTRY back!

Mary