Food Fighter

I'm always willing to cop to my somewhat retrogressive knee-jerk reactions, so here goes.

Last night I happened to catch a few minutes of the season premiere of chef Jamie Oliver's ABC reality series, Food Revolution. The basic premise of the show is that Jamie travels across America doing essentially the same thing he's become both famous and notorious for in his native Britain: trying to educate people about the dangers of the processed foods they're eating and drag them, kicking and screaming if necessary, toward a more healthy diet, all in the name of combating the dreaded "obesity epidemic." It should surprise no one that Jamie concentrates a substantial portion of his effort on what kids eat -- specifically what schools feed to kids. Obviously at face value this is an inarguably noble cause.

It should be said that I'm actually a big fan of Jamie Oliver's. I used to watch his BBC show The Naked Chef semi-religiously; I bought several of his cookbooks and I always admired not only his technique as a chef but his philosophy of teaching people to cook rather than simply training them to adhere to recipes and mimic styles. In other words, I'm always more than willing to give Jamie the benefit of the doubt. But something about the tone of last night's show, and maybe the show in general, really irked the hell out of me.

You'd be a fool to deny that we have a very serious problem with obesity -- particularly childhood obesity -- in this country. While I've argued plenty of times before about the media's irrepressibly giddy lust for slapping the term "epidemic" on any and every problem that affects a large enough group, there are far too many obscenely overweight people across this great land of ours and if you think it's simply a personal decision that affects no one but them and the Wal-Mart scooters whose suspension systems they push to the point of collapse, think again; the fact is that you and I ultimately pay for the health issues all that weight brings with it, even if we're not the ones packing on the pounds (which statistics say we likely are at this point). We pay via higher health insurance premiums, higher prices from businesses forced to either accommodate the obese or work around the days off from work they're inevitably forced to take, and more strain on Medicare. According to one statistic, if the obesity rate in this country continues to climb, by 2018 it will cost America $344 billion annually. So, yeah, it's our collective best interest as a nation to slim the hell down.

So why did it bug me to watch Jamie Oliver condescendingly castigate the owner of an independent restaurant in Los Angeles for having the temerity to serve milkshakes that contain actual ice cream as opposed to, say, yogurt and fruit? That's exactly what happened at one point, with Jamie seeming exasperated at the notion that someone would want to serve a customer a milkshake if that's what he or she orders. "That's not a milkshake; that's a smoothie," the restaurant owner says. "But why does it have to be? It's a milkshake," Jamie responds. I get that Jamie Oliver is undertaking the herculean task of trying to get us to change the way we think about the food we eat on a level that's DNA-deep, but I couldn't help but think that the hapless guy trying to run the restaurant aimed at, oh I don't know, giving people what they ask for, was right and his inquisitor from across the pond was wrong. People should be encouraged to buy smoothies rather than milkshakes; each of us should know what one can do to our health versus the other. But if somebody wants a milkshake, that person should be able to get a freaking milkshake. Once again, while there's an argument to be made that I'll eventually pay for the ingestion of too many shakes one way or the other, I'm not sure I or anyone else should be denied something that's harmless in moderation just because somebody else can't control him or herself and treats fatty foods like cocaine.

Jamie Oliver's biggest push, though, is something he and his army of acolytes have been following up for the last 14 hours or so via the circulation of a petition on Twitter. Jamie's white whale of the night -- one which keeps jumping out of the water as the series progresses -- was of course school cafeterias, mostly because they've got a captive audience and have a monumental impact on how someone's diet develops throughout his or her life. So what do Jamie & Co. want? No "sugary milk" in school cafeterias. In other words, they want to see chocolate milk, strawberry milk, any milk besides just plain old milk banned. Again, I get the argument that little good comes from giving kids milk that pumps them full of sugar and empty calories, but is an outright ban on it really the way to go? What about the child who just likes chocolate milk and can actually handle drinking a carton of it without ballooning into a mocha-colored Violet Beauregarde? At what point do we draw the line? At what point do we decide to stop protecting some at the expense of the legitimate desires of others?

I'm all for healthier options at America's schools; that and food education are musts at this point in our evolution as a nation. But there's a difference between an option and a mandate. And while it makes sense for Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolutionaries to fire all guns at once with the understanding that it may be what's required to effect even a small amount of necessary change, there's still something decidedly draconian about pushing to reflexively relieve us of our freedom of choice when it comes to what we eat.

Now, who's up for an In-N-Out Double-Double?

Related: DXM: Feast of Burden/11.25.09

Sacrificial Lambert

I'm not going spend more than a minute or so on this because I honestly just don't care all that much that Adam Lambert has managed to piss off a substantial portion of perpetually uptight America.

Late yesterday, Good Morning America made the decision to cancel this morning's appearance by Lambert -- not too surprising given that ABC was fielding outraged phone calls all Sunday night into Monday following his amusing antics at the American Music Awards. Guess GMA didn't want Lambert getting any more gay all over the unsuspecting folks in the flyovers and down south. (Either that or they just felt it would be best to keep him away from Sam Champion.)

Turns out, though, that CBS's Early Show will take up the slack and put Lambert on the air this morning -- a move that a lot of Lambert's fans are now singing the praises of. If you thought you'd never see the day that teenagers and homosexuals were shouting "Go CBS!" -- yeah, me neither.

Not so fast, though. While there's no direct connection between Adam Lambert and CBS parent company Viacom that I can see -- in other words, Viacom doesn't own the label putting Lambert's brand "spanking" new album out or anything -- the media giant does own MTV, which just premiered Lambert's video last night and no doubt wants to maintain a good relationship with a guy who with one performance managed to fulfill his destiny of becoming the next monster pop sensation. These days, thanks mostly to the internet and multi-media saturation, MTV needs hitmakers and big audience draws more than the latter needs it.

Besides, CBS knows Lambert on the Early Show will likely be a ratings bonanza. And in the end -- setting aside the fear that an angry mob led by the Parents Television Council will set fire to your corporate headquarters -- that's the most important consideration of all.

...And the Shows You Rode In On

I'm living proof that if there's one thing TV networks don't like, it's honesty.

When precious ad revenue is at stake, especially in a flatlining economy, a self-deprecating sense of humor isn't simply something that's sure to go unappreciated; it's the kind of thing that can get you shown the door by security and your name removed from a prime spot in the parking lot in a matter of minutes. You can openly roast just about everything else in television, which on the whole is an absurd industry ripe for ridicule, but don't you dare screw with a network's ability to make a profit -- because in the end, that's all that network cares about. Really -- all it cares about. Insulting the CEO's mother would be considered less offensive.

Which leaves me wondering what the hell ABC's going to do with Jimmy Kimmel this morning.

Yesterday, in a seemingly career suicidal moment of honesty for himself -- and a truly historic come-to-Jesus event for the business of network television itself -- the host of ABC's popular late-night talk show delivered a brutal and blistering comic attack on his network's new fall season. It happened during ABC's "Upfront" -- the annual live presentation of a network's fall prime-time lineup, including new shows and mid-season replacements, to the press and, more importantly, an audience full of potential advertisers and ad agencies.

Upfronts are generally pompous affairs held in places like Radio City Music Hall and featuring bombastic musical numbers, live celebrity endorsements, laser light, and a stage brimming with overly animated network assholes -- all of which is aimed at distracting the people with money to spend from the fact that your Wednesday night is anchored by a relaunch of BJ and the Bear, starring Ashton Kutcher (finally putting his trucker hat fetish to good use). But like everything else these days, through a combination of internet-led media transparency and the general cynicism of the masses, who've finally come to understand that they're being bullshitted nearly 24/7, the roll-outs for the new TV season are being met with a certain amount of reservation, rather than the wide-eyed awe of years past. In other words: advertisers, like the rest of us, now know how the television business works; they know the truth; they know that the Upfronts are a lot of dazzle, but that the reality in a couple of months -- canceled shows, rearranged schedules, flops that should've been hits -- will likely be much uglier.

Still, famous faces are expected to get on board for these things and behave as if the awful truth doesn't exist. They're expected to bury their self-respect and enthusiastically pimp for the network. For actors, who pretend to be someone else for a living anyway, this may not be much of a problem. For Kimmel, though, it was apparently impossible.

From writer Dave Itzkoff, in yesterday's New York Times online:

Bouncing onto the stage at just after 4 p.m., Mr. Kimmel self-deprecatingly declared, “All of ABC’s late night comedy talent is assembled here on one stage.” After rattling off a few statistics about the affluence of his viewers, he then admitted that he’d made all the numbers up. (He said so in a more obscene way.)

Then, in a “Jerry Maguire”-like moment of clarity, Mr. Kimmel said, “Everything you’re going to hear this week is” nonsense. “Let’s get real here. Let’s get Dr. Phil-real here. These new fall shows? We’re going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more.”

If ABC is so confident in its new fall shows, he asked, why is it announcing them at the same time it announces the midseason shows that will replace those fall shows? “This show ‘Shark Tank’ has the word tank right in the title,” he said.

To the ABC advertisers, Mr. Kimmel said, “Every year we lie to you and every year you come back for more. You don’t need an upfront. You need therapy. We completely lie to you, and then you pass those lies onto your clients.”

Mr. Kimmel then took a verbal swing at his own network, reminding the audience that ABC had attempted to hire away Mr. Leno when his tenure ended at NBC’s “Tonight Show.” But, according Mr. Kimmel, NBC said it would not give up Mr. Leno, “even if we have to destroy our own network to keep him.”

By devoting its entire 10 p.m. lineup, Monday through Friday, to Mr. Leno, Mr. Kimmel said NBC is “giving Jay’s viewers exactly what they want. An early-bird special.”

By deciding on their fall schedule in April, Mr. Kimmel said, “NBC got such a head start, they’ve already had time to cancel half their schedule.”

Mr. Kimmel also aimed a couple of zingers at Fox. That network’s action series “24,” he said, was “a head butt away from cancellation.” Next season, he said, Jack Bauer would have a new sidekick “played by Kiefer Sutherland’s probation officer.”

Returning to ABC’s advertisers, Mr. Kimmel said, “Next year on ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ your product could kill Dr. Izzie. It just depends on how much you want to pay.”

In closing, Mr. Kimmel said, “I think all our shows are going to work this year. I really do.” He paused. “I don’t, really.”

Before departing the stage, he said: “The important thing to remember is: who cares, it’s not your money.”

Now make no mistake: I have no idea how the network's going to address Jimmy Kimmel's comments, but he won't lose his job over this; firing him would be a tacit confirmation by ABC of every single point he cleverly made. In fact, it's a thing of beauty that Kimmel went into that meeting yesterday knowing full-well that the network likely wouldn't touch him and that, ironically, that too was confirmation of what he was saying: He makes money for the network, and short of walking into Bob Iger's office and hitting him repeatedly with a baseball bat, there was no way ABC would pull the plug on him.

The fact is that Jimmy Kimmel understands something that network executives are still refusing to grasp -- or are simply fighting tooth and nail against. He gets that in our new hyper-connected culture, it's beyond the realm of possibility to lie outright to an audience -- and therefore it's fucking stupid to even try. Kimmel's a comedian, and someone who comes from a talk radio background -- an industry to which those who tend to be masochistically honest are drawn and usually thrive. As such, he did what all decent comedians do: confront the harsh reality of our times through a wink and a smile; help us laugh at the absurdity so we don't cry about it.

What Jimmy Kimmel said yesterday, his pulling back of the facade of television's dying "magic box" ethos to reveal the soulless profit-machine now at its core -- it needed to be said.

And it's a damn good thing he's in a position to not only say it but get away with it.

Stay Leno

Good to see that this time around the shift in late-night talent is being handled in a much less ego-driven and much more dignified manner.

The Huffington Post: Peacock Shock: Leno Moving to 10pm on NBC to Keep Him from Going to ABC/12.8.08

Everything Is Under Control

I almost wish I were naive enough to react with shock and outrage over CNN reporter Jessica Yellin's public admission last night that her former bosses at (one would presume) ABC News edited or outright killed stories critical of the White House during the lead-up to the Iraq war. It would actually be nice to have anything other than jaded resignation left in me when it comes to crap like this -- really.

That said, the biggest mistake anyone could make when considering Yellin's disclosure would be to assume that such a revelation is specific only to ABC. Or MSNBC. Or even her current employer, CNN.

They all intentionally dropped the ball (and occasionally continue to), not in the name of misguided patriotism but in a greed-fueled effort to cash in on the audience's misguided patriotism.

Read it and weep.

(The Politico: CNN's Yellin Says Network Execs Killed Critical White House Stories)