Posted on 01/24/2010 9:52:07 AM PST by Brandonmark
I thought I would be in a better mood in 2010. I mean, you can't do much worse than 2009.
But after only 24 days, I'm deeply cranky about several things on the food radar.
Watercress-gate: Earlier this month, Food Network aired an episode of "Iron Chef America" starring White House chef Cristeta Comerford competing with Bobby Flay against Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse.
The hook: The chefs were to use vegetables harvested from the White House kitchen garden started by Michelle Obama.
Only they didn't.
Sure, they showed the four chefs tromping through the garden picking and snipping and selecting their bounty. The first lady even made an appearance to tout the garden's local, sustainable, organic symbolism.
Once the group started cooking, they were back at the usual Kitchen Stadium studio in New York City using substitute ingredients from a grocery.
But that wasn't stated during the show. The audience was led to believe that the "secret ingredients" came straight from the White House backyard.
Food Network later issued a statement saying the switch was due to a production delay between the White House shoot and the studio cooking, and that the chefs were allowed to use only types of produce that they had harvested from the garden.
It wasn't exactly a documentary, just prime-time entertainment. Nothing more.
Understand this, though: The deception wasn't an accident. Everyone involved had to know a key part of the premise of the show would be fudged. Months of planning went into the show. The marketing budget alone, which included full-page newspaper ads across the country, was sky high. The results: More than 4 million people watched — a new Food Network record.
But it does prompt a question:
If you'll fake a cook-off using the full backing of the White House for something so insignificant and yet so stage-managed and overhyped that it bordered on the ridiculous, what else will you fake?
this writer just said a MOUTHFUL!
“Watercress-gate” gets 900+ hits on skru.Goggle... the Fraud Top Chef...jeez the Pravda Food Network is next.
It’s symbolic of this White house. Everything is staged and involves “sleight of handâ€.
I heard that high levels of mercury in the soil around the White House made it impossible to grow food there.
Next thing you know, the Iron Chef competitors will actually KNOW the “Secret Ingredient” before it is revealed. And The Chairmen aren’t really super-rich gourmands who personally put together the competition.
Please, don’t tell me that! ;)
(FWIIW, the “white house watercress-gate” IS a fraud — moreso than the premise for the show. It is true to form for this particular White House set of residents.)
But seems like there is plenty of fertilizer there...if you know what I mean!
I dunno...Maybe a birth certificate?
Remember Diane Sawyer and the ‘fake’ explosion of the pickup gas tank?
Any person with one quarter of a brain knows this WH is full of BS and spin.
Wake up America. The WH hates you and will lie, cheat, and steal to destroy your lives.
One reason I don’t watch TV. You can’t trust *anything*.
There’s no way in Hell,
That little garden can yield
That much fresh produce.
The next Five Year Plan
Probably has Michelle’s garden
Feed all Maryland...
The Chairman of Iron Chef America is a bad B-movie actor. Put "Solar Strike" on your Netflix queue is you want to see him in action...
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