All posts tagged "Michael Pollan"

[rebelmouse-image 24749849 original_size="640x480" expand=1]A number of people have asked me to blog about the food safety bill that passed through the Senate and is fixing to pass through the House, if they can hammer out some procedural issues. KJ at XX put some useful links together, if you want to read up on it. Grist has been blogging the hell out of it, and Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser endorsed it in a NY Times op-ed. The reason that a lot of people are skeptical of this bill is that it's widely supported by Big Agra, which doesn't bode well. The fact that it passed with wide margins in the Senate also makes me nervous---if it didn't meet widespread Republican opposition, that's a good sign that it's toothless.

[rebelmouse-image 24749740 alt="CSA Week 16" original_size="500x375" expand=1]CSA Week #16

[rebelmouse-image 24748882 original_size="374x500" expand=1]And with this, (hat tip), my boundless enthusiasm for Michael Pollan's body of work starts to subside. Where's the Pollan of The Omnivore's Dilemma, who openly worried that there weren't more sustainable food farms that also had feminist values? I guess he got eaten by a Pollan who knows that taking swipes at feminism gets you fat checks from the NY Times. For even as he praises Julia Childs as a feminist icon---a title she deserves, since she actively resist the sexism that makes women kitchen cooks, but turns men into chefs---he's doing the "best feminists are the ones who get thee to the kitchen and pretend that it's liberation" schtick. Because in his eyes, Childs isn't a feminist hero because she made cooking a career for herself and didn't apologize for that, it's because she really liked cooking. And feminists who suggested that having your own income might be more useful to a woman's quiver of survival skills than knowing how to fricassee were just meany-heads with no sense of beauty.