In their relentless effort to make their candidate seem warm and relatable, the Kamala Harris partisans have touted her assorted cooking videos on YouTube. But that spin can be taken too far.
Indian American TV host Padma Lakshmi penned an op-ed for The New York Times titled “As a Cook, Here’s What I See in Kamala Harris.” The Times Opinion page summed it up on X: In cooking, Harris “displays the very qualities this country sorely needs — her care, and her ability to tell a new kind of story about what it means to be American.” She also wrote, “Food relays the complexity of people’s stories.”
What is all this supposed to mean? Democrats always think they have cornered the market on traits like “caring” and “complexity” and storytelling. But this is just another saccharine narrative meant to sell Harris as the opposite of their hate object Donald Trump. “Cooking well requires organization, attention to detail, patience — and the impulse to bring people together. In a divided country, these qualities can help Ms. Harris be a good, even a great, president.”
Neither The New York Times nor Lakshmi acknowledged she hosted a “massive Zoom call” with chefs on Aug. 29 where she said, “We will hopefully raise a ton of money for the Harris-Walz campaign. … Let’s raise money, and let’s win this election.”
You could imagine Jay Leno writing about how Tim Walz fixing cars is like being president, or someone back in 2012 might have suggested Paul Ryan’s deer hunting said something about being president. Some of the qualities you need might translate, but the metaphors are seriously strained. Instead, it just feels like Lakshmi is selling her pal Harris and for a bonus, her new Hulu show “Taste the Nation.”
If Harris’ cooking qualities naturally carried over to her political duties, wouldn’t she have a better record as vice president of uniting Americans? Instead, Democrats have spent their time in the White House bitterly dividing Americans. The supposedly caring/patient people didn’t typically bring people together. Usually, they ripped apart the opposition as comparable to Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler.
Later in the piece, Lakshmi noted that Hillary Rodham Clinton sneered on the campaign trail in 1992 that “I could have stayed home and baked cookies,” but she decided to become a lawyer instead. Does that mean Clinton was not cut out for the presidency because of her distaste for baking?
Lakshmi can only mourn: “Cooking was for a long time a trap for female political figures.” For Harris, who didn’t choose to marry until she was nearly 50, cooking videos might take some of the career-woman edge off her image, and it can play up her exotic ethnic background.
I never miss a season of “Top Chef,” which Lakshmi hosted for 17 years. In her article, she wrote about judging the contestants’ mettle in the kitchen. “One chef, for instance, always splattered food and left jars knocked over — he was frazzled and out of his depth, displaying a lack of leadership potential.” You can’t “panic under pressure when the clock is ticking.”
This “Top Chef” metaphor doesn’t match this campaign. Harris is skipping the competition. She’s mostly staying out of the kitchen. The panic about her performance crumbling under pressure is never-ending, judging from how much she has been kept under wraps.
In the end, Lakshmi is just thrilled that someone who “looks like her” could be president. It doesn’t matter if it would go just as badly for America as it’s been going during Harris’ vice presidency.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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The lies, cons, deceptions, hypocrisy, and treachery of this Lying, destructive, corrupt, treasonous, dishonest, unethical Democrat Party cabal and their useful idiot self-serving Camal a Harris know no bounds. This treasonous Democrat Party and its “useful idiot” supporters will do or say Anything to be able to dictate control, then access power and retain it by any means available. No matter the costs to the people, the government, or the nation.
As you all have seen some black leaders comments on the Israeli tragedy shows how a lot of black Americans are supporting this attack on the Jewish nation by making excuses for Hamas – If you are White, Asians, Hispanic, and even middle eastern and anybody who is not black – you ARE justified to feel discriminated by Blacks Americans because you are – and you have every reason not to like black America – As Smollett case has shown for all of us to see its A VERY RACIST BLACK AMERICA pushing a very racist ANTI AMERICAN black supremacism and socialism that is influencing the behavior on these DAs and of the Democratic Party today and putting on display for all of us to see a culture that has been taught for the past 50 years in their homes and neighborhoods, hate and racism towards the white population – I have experienced racism and abuse from blacks Americans and im not the only one experiencing this abuse – people stop taking their abuse and its time to start calling it out and start calling out the racism’s’ coming from the black community hell bent at hate against the white, Asian and Hispanic while excusing rampant crime by mostly blacks while trying to sell everyone having been victimized by history to excuse not taking accountability and to continue the rampant abuse on the rest of us.
“Usually, they ripped apart the opposition as comparable to Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler.”
They do the same to half of their taxpaying constituents.
THEN demand we pay MORE.