The President Has Birthers; The First Lady Has Leadites
Obama Foodorama’s Eddie Gehman Kohan is downright giddy over the first lady’s impact on food:
The White House Kitchen Garden was the start of an unprecedented paradigm shift in our national conversation on children’s nutrition and health, on food and agriculture, on the role of cooking and nutrition education; and it’s a signpost for the Obama administration’s approach to these issues. Never before have we had a First Lady with a food policy agenda, and never before have we had an assistant White House chef–Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass–who has assumed a public role in nutrition and health education, and in creating that food policy agenda.
But, says Eddie, the President has Birthers. And the First Lady has leadites:
In the last two weeks, the lead myth has returned with a vengeance, in stories with inflammatory headlines such as Michelle Obama’s Toxic Veggie Nightmare. This, despite the fact that lead as a toxic issue in the garden has been debunked by major soil scientists, in interviews with your intrepid blogger that appeared here and on Huffington Post. We apparently live in a world that’s devoid of fact checkers, because everyone who’s newly writing about the “lead threat” is referencing the non-fact checked June 17 Mother Jones story about “sewage sludge lacing the White House veggie garden,” which started the leadstravaganza (and these stories are appearing internationally, too; for instance in the UK’s The Guardian). Mother Jones didn’t check their facts about what lead levels actually mean in food gardens, and they didn’t check their facts about when sewage sludge–in the form of fertilizer–may have been spread on the White House lawn (their dates are wrong, as is their assertion about the practice). And despite talking to one of the same soil scientists that Ob Fo interviewed to debunk the toxic myth, Mother Jones refused to correct their story. But why bother to correct the record? It’s not as if Mother Jones is engaged in a project of journalism, or interested in facts. The new wave of Leadites are also referencing Andrew Kimbrell’s Huffington Post nonsense, which also referenced the same Mother Jones piece–after the Mother Jones piece had already been debunked. It’s all an extraordinary case of toxic internet telephone.
Jeff Stier is the individual who kicked off this new, latest wave of idiocy, on July 23, with Is the White House Organic Garden Toxic to Kids?, which appeared on the Forbes website. Stier is the same fellow who was very publicly and hilariously smacked down on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show when he tried to claim that the White House Kitchen Garden was a public health hazard, “falling somewhere on the threat scale between five-year-olds who smoke and fourteen-year-olds who have unprotected anal sex” (no, not making that up). Stier emerged from the Daily Show video outing looking like a jerk, but that hasn’t stopped him from getting in on the gardening action some more. In his latest piece in Forbes, Stier points to the fictional lead contamination of the garden to try to make a case for industrial chemicals such as Bisphenol A and pthalates, because the world is already polluted. Nope, not making that one up, either.
The White House has issued a statement and Eddie’s philosophical:
There’s always a period in time as the culture assimilates new information, and gets used to big change, when there’s much opposition. In the first 200 days of the Obama era, we’ve gone through some massive upheavals, and the Birther movement is symbolic of an entrenched opposition that’s looking for anything to undermine forward movement. The same thing is clearly going on with the First Lady’s food agenda, though on a far more smaller scale. But the President’s going to continue to be the President, no matter what the Birthers say, and Mrs. Obama’s going to continue to garden, and to further shift our paradigm on food and nutrition and health consciousness, no matter what the Leadites say.
You’ll want to read Eddie’s full post to fill in any blanks. Me, I am hoping he’s got it exactly right.
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4 Responses to “The President Has Birthers; The First Lady Has Leadites”
A lie travels halfway around the internet before the truth is even printed.
Joe —
Why the hype?
Michelle Obama is not causing the nation to [re]consider _anything_ or to do _anything_ en masse.
There is no need for, nor do Americans desire, any kind of federal government or nation-wide “food policy” any more than they need or want a “clothing policy” or “speech policy” or “thought policy,” despite the serious wishes among some on the fringist Left to the contrary. Americans want _none_ of this stuff.
Sixties-activism-reissued-in-the-late-2000s with regard to food or anything else is not a priority, or proper.
We don't need or want a PC “paradigm shift” about food or anything else, no corruption of public health and public health _care_ to include PC stuff in addition to improper “wellness” and “lifestyle” meddling, etc.
The last thing I want is to see gardening tainted — I not only grew fruits and veggies when growing up in California, but went onward to apply my skills to help some guys with an, ahem, special kind of indoor project in Seattle — or misappropriated. Gardening promotion (especially in the future for Baby Boomers who are aging), you bet. Urban gardens, not for activism's sake but to help poor people and others in areas of decline like Detroit feed themselves and replace decrepit structures with greenery, which is also productive and uplifting for people, by all means. A revival of 1960s “back to nature and Death to Evil Corporate Demon Industry” with contemporary PC-gourmet elitist overtones, and a horribly intrusive federal government that not only uses PC as a weapon against modern agriculture but tries to rule and ruin people's lives in the name of wellness, PC lifestyles, and social engineering, no, no, no. NO.
Joe —
Why so calm?
Michelle Obama is enabling our nation to reconsider how we're gradually, willingly altering all of our food.
There is need for, and Americans desire, to use a tiny fraction of our tax dollars to address the nutritive value of our foods. Americans get to eat more than anyone, but what are we eating? Low-grade cuts of meat with non-nutritive lettuce, dough conditioners, soda pop and French fries?
Sixties-activism-reissued-in-the-late-2000s with regard to food may be our last hope. I don't recall much activism after that.
We need a paradigm shift about food. It meshes perfectly with our recent advances in understanding public health and public health care, in addition to wellness and lifestyle choices. Most people don't even know that tobacco smoke is radioactive. Education is the key to growth, but every society has had members who require or insist upon ruling a lower class.