I was holding out hope that Kathleen Parker’s critique of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program might include some insightful reforms or interesting anecdotes. But she actually concluded her critique by calling for parents to make their kids’ own damn lunch.
I admit that I had let down my guard. I allowed myself to get sucker-punched by Kathleen Parker because she had convinced me that she’s a “different kind of conservative.” You know, one with an ounce of common sense and some slight ability to empathize with mothers who don’t have the money for a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a banana.
My mistake. I will endeavor not to make it a second time.
Having just donated several large jars of peanut butter for a hunger drive, I can only scoff at Kathleen Parker’s willful ignorance.
boo baby, don’t turn your back to cannibals.
oh BooMan, you’re so naive sometimes.
Parker was always an ignorant hater.
Boo,
Republicans never change. They have been like this since I can remember. (l950’s) Only the tone changes due to the change in social mores. Kathleen Parker disapproves of the current tone, but she is 100% Republican and always will be. She was probably born with IKE earrings dangling from her little ears.
‘I allowed myself to get sucker-punched by Kathleen Parker because she had convinced me that she’s a “different kind of conservative.”‘
The only ‘difference’ between conservatives?”:
Is whether they’re cruel and selfish Psychopaths, or cruel and selfish Sociopaths.
Was going to add to this thread but all of you that have posted have covered this topic very well. Job well done all.
My short review of the article:
whiny, bitchy, petty, clueless and rude.
And so logically flawed. I’m glad to read the many great comments; here’s some additions.
Kathleen makes these statements:
“Kudos to Obama for recognizing and trying to address childhood obesity. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until these little human pillows reach adulthood and then, assuming their hearts hold out, advanced age…I’m with the first lady all the way on making modifications to lunches swimming in grease and over-seasoned with sugar and salt.”
and simultaneously states her desire to let schools feed children fried chicken, flour tortillas and other junk.
These sorts of logical fallacies are laden with a whole ton of catty horseshit. The person who could write, and the editor who could allow, the sentence “This doesn’t mean that the first lady’s program is “gastro-fascism,” as one writer put it, though I rather like the term” to make it into print are each low-quality people. At a certain point, it goes past merely poor professional standards and into pure human inadequacy.
And how about this admission from Parker that “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I’M TALKING ABOUT”: “Obama is merely expanding her maternal focus to include all those public school kids whose mothers apparently have forgotten how to make a sandwich. Or whose fathers have forgotten to say, “Get those plugs out of your ears and make friends with the lawn mower” — or whatever its urban equivalent.” That last part in particular just blows my mind. In essence, Kathleen is saying “I know what’s going on in my elite suburbia, and I don’t care to learn what the darkies are doing in their cities, but surely the kids can hustle their poor neighbors to gain the money to feed themselves!” Where are the workhouses, indeed.
This moral and intellectual abdication goes triple for the last sentence of the column. “YOUR MOM DOESN’T LOVE YOU IF SHE DOESN’T HAVE THE MONEY AND TIME TO MAKE A NUTRITIOUS BREAKFAST AND LUNCH FOR YOU EVERY DAY” is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen published by a major newspaper. Does the Post have an editor overseeing Parker’s work?
Her columns are nothing more than regurgitated, ugly Freerepublic comments.
When Parker first came to my attention several years ago, my immediate impression was ‘wannabe right-wing Maureen Dowd’. (In case unclear: no, that is not a compliment.) Though I’ve only read her rarely since, on occasions like this where someone calls something by her to my attention (and not always even then), I’ve seen nothing since to alter that 1st impression.
So much fail in this one that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Let’s start with:
Oh, my! Advocating for healthy school lunches is a “war on women and children?” In what world is that? Granted healthy school lunches is an alternative world from that promulgated by Ms. Parker and the GOP — the one that would do away with SNAP, federal subsidies for school lunch programs, no public money for women’s reproductive health, mandated vaginal probes and anti-abortion counseling before a woman can access abortion medical services, anti-equal pay for women, etc. All of that, to a rational mind, could easily be described as a “war on women and children,” but how the fuck does healthy school lunches equate to an attack on women and children?
Not moving along, there’s “first lady’s well-intentioned but disastrous school nutrition program.” Conceding that Michelle Obama is “well-intentioned” and not evil, but with the clear implication that she’s misguided is a standard debate tactic among right-wing women. That leaves “disastrous school nutrition program.” Disastrous compared to what? Laura and Barbara Bush’s “let’s read” programs? (Well, not so much programs as occasional photo-ops for those two women.) Disastrous compared to Ronald Reagan’s “ketchup is a vegetable program?” (More on that in a moment.) Where’s the evidence that it’s a disaster?
The Harvard School of Public Health has found New school meal standards significantly increase fruit, vegetable consumption.
That suggests that describing school lunches as “dumpster derby” predated the new nutrition standards. Ms. Parker prefers to cite the School Nutrition Association as the authority. Not that it has done any actual field research on the issue. The only evidence it needs to declare the program a “disaster” is that revenues for its corporate processed food sponsors are down. (Ms. Parker sort of neglected to mention the Association’s funding source.)
Ms. Obama, perhaps wisely, chose to focus on the simple fact that school lunches had become nutritional wastelands over decades of “ketchup is a vegetable” and outsourcing cafeteria kitchens to pre-packaged, processed food producers. Given a choice between healthy food and crap, there was no debate. Congress and the USDA moved on it and school districts proceeded to implement the change. For once the GOP couldn’t craft opposition talking points.
Ah, but now Ms. Parker wants to engage us in a larger debate. “How dare Ms. Obama who sends her children to a $50,000 a year fancy, smantchy school tell other mothers what their children should eat for lunch.” More precisely, that public schools should have no role in feeding children. That’s a “mother’s job.”
She concludes with the previously and thoroughly discredited interpretation of food (brown bag lunch) “is love.”
A note of caution for liberals, right-wingers are just beginning to gear up over this issue. First up: summer school lunches for urban children. The GOP is well versed in how to chip away at programs they don’t like and well experienced in taking the temporary outrage from their opponents. That’s how in the long run they’ve been winning all public policy social safety net issues. They win because they mask the large debates that they would lose into small disputes that they can often win. Democrats/liberals have become the guardians of the status-quo but are equally loathe to an open and honest larger debate and re-think. Thus, we end up with Democrats embracing the privatization of public schools. And are unclear enough about what we as a nation want school lunch programs to be that they will remain vulnerable to GOP and corporate attacks.
I thought you were exaggerating the bit about “feed your own kids”
but no, no you were not.
You know, I haven’t heard any stories myself of school children rebelling over whole wheat tortillas. Maybe I don’t know enough people with school age children. At any rate, if that is what’s going on, is Michelle Obama really going to send in her vegan storm troopers to MAKE those kids eat their tortillas? I suspect she’d be open to negotiation.
With two ten year old boys, whole wheat bread proved to be the one impossible sell for me. “Wonder Bread” to a denser, high quality white bread was easy. A ten minute lesson in reading food labels and maximum daily allowance of sugar and they good with substituting water for sugared fruit drinks and a single cookie snack a day. They barely noticed when I served them nonfat milk instead of low-fat.
Uprated primarily for “vegan storm troopers”. Very nicely turned.
Any expectation that I once had that Kathleen Parker would ever again write anything which would remotely interest me faded several years ago. I used to occasionally read her column, but it has been a very long time since I have bothered with her. Her stuff has become nothing more than pedestrian right wing bullshit.
School lunches shouldn’t just be free for needy and poor children. They should be free as a default of attending. You’re enrolled? Your lunch is free. Food is ridiculously cheap and can be made widely available in a nutritious manner if we have the right policy. And if we don’t kill our food supply regions from impending climate change.
I wonder if the cost of food for all the students would be offset by reducing administration costs, since you would no longer need someone who has to check lists, communicate with parents, follow up with parents who haven’t paid, etc?
Also avoids: Theft case stuns Rialto schools.
Also, individual fraud.
And school lunch contractor fraud and N.J. school districts overpaid food service management firms by more than $320K, study says. Stop the outsourcing of school lunch management and preparation before Halliburton or Walmart takes over this public function.
That would require a major rethink of the purpose of school lunch programs. In France, teaching children how to eat is part of educational curriculum and done through the school lunch program. A good thing IMHO.
And even being able to get it legislated in the first place. Look beyond the ability to get the “free shool pizza for everyone”. Means testing: it’s the American way.
Finland reformed theirs in 1999 and it’s largely been successful. The problems I can see happening are kids just not eating; “no pizza or fries? Fuck that I’ll just go hungry.” As you said, requires a different way of looking at lunch.
Also this is a perfect way for third parties to build support. The black panthers didnt just carry rifles around scaring white people. They organized and fed children:
free breakfast program
The Black Panthers free breakfast program, if not revolutionary, was consciousness changing. At that time working class and middle class people didn’t know or fully comprehend that poor kids skipped breakfast because there was nothing to eat in their homes. School breakfasts were unheard of and now they exist in most schools.
However, at that time food stamps were relatively new (WIC didn’t come into existence until 1972), not so easy to obtain, and there was a social stigma attached to receiving the benefit.
The other day a friend mentioned that she packs her daughter’s breakfast, snacks, and lunch because her income is over the limit for free/reduced school meals and the full price is $6/day which she can’t afford. No wonder some poor kids that get free school meals look at not-so-poor kids with their school lunch bags and conclude that the parents of the not-so-poor kids care more. Very screwed up social, economic, and nutritional messages are being given to kids.