Alice Waters: Alice v. Sarah

I've lost all heart for criticizing Alice Waters or her cookbooks. So she's a little snooty, so her books are out of touch, so I had a bad experience with her 7 years ago. Who cares? Alice and me, fundamentally we're on the same team. 

Whereas Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. I disagree with her on every single issue, yes. But she also threatens me on a primal level that has something to do with the fact that she played basketball AND she competed in beauty pageants. That she gave birth to a Down Syndrome baby and went back to work three days later. (Three days? Seriously? Is she bionic?) That she proudly poses for glamorous photos with dead bears. Stridently self-confident. Dead sure of her rightness. A brassy tomboy.

So totally not my type. It's a schoolyard thing. And with those far-right politics? She's making me absolutely crazy.

Now I will turn my attention back to food and rant no more. I just had to get this out of my system.

I went in to the City yesterday to see Alice Waters on a Slow Food Nation panel about "Edible Education," though no one there could really agree what the term meant. Like most panels the discussion bounced around erratically -- though inspiringly!  It is hard to argue with offering our children better food.

Waters wore a fetching little cotton dress and playful sandals and made her pitch for a federal "slow food" school lunch program. Alas, she was the least articulate panelist up there. She seemed extremely nervous, and (I felt) everyone treated her like a beloved, dotty old aunt as she breathily 

outlined her idealistic vision of wholesale, top-down change.

She was very pie-in-the-sky, whereas other panelists -- most of whom had more practical experience making things happen -- listened to her patiently and respectfully, then offered their own earthbound ideas for how a transformation might realistically occur, piecemeal. 

Alice bristled and disagreed in her quavering voice, continuing to throw down her dreamy all-or-nothing gauntlets. I was slightly embarrassed for her, but paradoxically, came away liking her a little better.

Probably a schoolyard thing.