Feast or Famine - Part 2: Jamie Takes Hollywood

UPDATE (5/25/11): Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return to ABC at the end of May. CLICK HERE to see all related posts.

We may have our issues with some of ABC's programming decisions (*cough* Made In America *cough*) but if there's one thing they're getting right, it's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which is currently airing in its second season.

If you missed the first season of the show, then you didn't see the frankly shocking results of Jamie's campaign to examine the quality of the food available to public school children in Huntington, VA - or the unbelievable amount of resistance he skillfully navigated while trying to educate the town's people on the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of highly processed, low quality ingredients.

Now in the second season Jamie has taken the campaign to Los Angeles, and if Huntington was resistant to his message, then Los Angeles is downright hostile. The first thing the L.A. Unified School District did was ban Oliver from every single one of its schools. The critical mistake in their reaction was failure to consider the fact that if Oliver is a good chef, he is a brilliant activist. He moved his family to L.A. for the run of the show, so I expect his next move will be to enroll his kids in L.A. Unified. They can refuse access to a food critic, but they can't keep out a parent. On the other hand, considering what Oliver has seen, he may just want to keep his kids away from L.A.'s public school system altogether. Lord knows I would.

Watch the drama unfold in Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC, Tuesday nights at 8/7 Central, or anytime on your computer via Hulu.

More links about the Food Revolution:

LAUSD launches new menu, denies Oliver's campaign had anything to do with its creation. 

TIME tv critic shares viewers concerns about the show's structure, and their desire to stay tuned in anyway.

Roughly 80% of L.A. Times readers polled feel that LAUSD made a massive miscalculation in working against Oliver, rather than with him. 

Learn more about the Jamie Oliver Foundation and what it's doing to keep you and your kids healthy.

More than you ever wanted to know about Ryan Seacrest (who produces Oliver's show, along with the entire Kardiashian franchise and several other "reality" shows).

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New Study Finds Wage Gap Non-Existant If You Eliminate Wage Gap From Said Study

I tried to stick to posting a brief, objective comment on the screamingly obvious design flaw in this study, I really did. But there was a "problem" with my account which led to my comments being repeatedly deleted from the site, so now I just can't resist a full-fledged rebuttal.

Everyone, I would like to introduce you to Carrie Lukas, an intelligent, educated, and probably well-meaning writer who nevertheless knows next to squat about research design or gender-influenced economics...which does not stop her from spouting out drivel about them at every possible (not to mention extremely profitable) opportunity. In fact, scratch that whole well-meaning part and replace it with "highly motivated by personal gain and a total disregard for little things like "facts" and "evidence."

Ms. Lukas's most recent misinformed diatribe was posted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal as a review of a "study" which supposedly found that the wage gap between men and women no longer exists. Yippie! Now we're all on a level playing field and what a relief to not have to worry about equal pay for equal work anymo...wait, what?

Oh, did I mention that this study was conducted using only single, childless, urban workers under the age of 30? That's right, when you remove little factors like families and age and where you live from the workforce study, it turns out that that whole wage gap thing magically disappears. Never mind that the national census including, you know, everyone, found that women still make an average of $.77 for every dollar a man makes (unless of course those women are Black, in which case they make $.68, or Latina, in which case they make $.58). And never mind that the wage gap is a reflection of subtle but consistent penalties placed upon the wage-earning potential of women who take maternity leave and still balance the majority of the child rearing and homemaking responsibilities at home with available opportunities for career advancement at work. And while we're at it, never mind that the effects of these penalties increase over time, so removing workers over age 30 from the study would automatically skew the results anyway. The point is, Ms. Lukas's eyes landed on a study that said exactly what she wanted to hear, so it must be right...right?

The reality is that this study actually points more evidence toward the fact that on a level playing field, women are entirely capable of performing just as well as men - and their salaries have begun to reflect that. But institutionalized gender bias distorts that playing field as soon as relationships and children enter the mix, and it is women with families - and their salaries - that suffer the most as a result. In fact, the wage gap between mothers and non-mothers is larger than the gap between women and men. To my mind, this is evidence that men are indeed beginning to take on more of the child rearing and homemaking chores...and perhaps their own salaries are beginning to show the strain.

And therein lies the great problem with gender bias; not that it oppresses one gender or another, but that it necessarily denigrates both genders at the same time. You simply cannot shove half of the population of an entire society into a one-size-fits-all boxed stereotype without automatically shoving the other half into the polar opposite box...and neither gender belongs there. Societal change is a process of two steps forward and one step back, and though we've come a long way there is still an awful lot of room for improvement.

Personally, I'll believe we've achieved true gender equality in this country when I see women taking the football field and men shaking the pom pons.

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A House Still Divided

A northern transplant living in the deep south learns a few things about perspective. As I used to say to my still-northern friends and family, it's not so much the first time you hear a southerner refer to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression" that you really get to thinking. It's the day you realize you can kinda' see their point.


They say that history is written by the winners, but at least ostensibly a civil war leaves only losers in its wake. Abraham Lincoln never said a truer word when he noted that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." So what happens to a nation after it has been unified by force rather than coming together voluntarily over common interests?


Writer John Blake for CNN proposes that the Civil War never really ended, and today we can still see the division of our nation through blots of red and blue ink on our political landscape. Just a little something to think about as we start gearing up for the 2012 election.

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