Rachael Ray Won't Cry for You

Rachael Ray, bobble-head pod-people, and the death of soul searching.

Billboards on buildings and the backs of buses across America, TV spots, print ads, and food-network pals have been touting the thrill and joy of a new talk show starring that perky, upbeat, and relentlessly annoying Food Network star Rachael Ray. The rockin’, supposedly real Rachael Ray show premiered on September 18th and is being brought to us from Oprah's Harpo Productions. And, like tough-love jerk and Oprah discovery "Doctor" Phil, Ray takes a no-nonsense, no-cardigans-and-hugs, no-tears approach.

"I want the show to be fun -- a lot of laughter," she said last January as she described her plan for the TV gabfest (Reuters, Ltd.). "I'm not interested in chit-chatting with experts or talking about anything serious, and I don't want any crying because that's not me. I want to stay true to myself."

Alas, soul-searching is dead. And experts? Who needs them-- all those silly experts who write long-winded reports on global warming and the difficulties of occupying Iraq, pah! Buncha ivory-tower ninnies! Girlie-men. No gumption! No get-up-and-go. They lack the muscles of Arnold the Governator and the can-do spirit of Rachael Ray!

Once, long ago, Ray-producer Oprah sought to seriously look within and feel her pain and the pain of others. Yet, times have changed and talk shows about serious stuff, well, now all that sixties psychobabble seems passe, even unpatriotic. The post-Freudian "look within and find your inner traumas and heal yourself" thing seems old, as forgotten as Jimmy Carter's suggestion that people could wear cardigans and turn down the heat in their homes to reduce oil consumption. (Reduce oil consumption? Pah! Let's build bulky SUVs and McMansions that GOBBLE fuel! We are burly-men--- and women. “SUPERSIZE ME, BABY!” yodels the lumbering American bulkoid of recent years.)

Thank goodness, strong-gal Rachael Ray isn’t trying to delve into why we’re all bulking up, hulking up in Iraq, etc. Nor is she seeking the sad, poignant, painful moments of the lives of her guests as Barbwa Walters did, hoping for the money-shot: tears! Nah, Ray wants to show how to change tires and how to hide clutter in your house when guest drop over. She's gonna stick to solving everyday problems in a "fun, lighthearted way," as Ray said (Jan. 2006, Reuters).

I'm eager for a show that makes changing tires on your car fun. If anyone can do that, Ray is the gal, right? Who is the woman that Jill Hunter Pellettieri (writing for Slate.com in July 2005), said “may be the world’s most reviled chef”? She added that “Entire blogs are devoted to slamming the perky Food Network Superstar.” (See Rachel Ray Sucks Community at http://community.livejournal.com/rachael_ray_sux/ )

Rachael Domenica Ray was born on August 25, 1968 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and grew up in Lake George, New York. Her ancestors are from Sicily and she’s part of a large Italian-American family, according the “Meet Rachael Ray” web page provided by the Food Network. (A Wikipedia bio states that on her father’s side she’s French-American.) She started out selling candy and then managed the fresh foods department at Macy’s in New York. She then helped open Agata & Vaentina, a gourmet market where she was the buyer and store manager. Her first book, from a small N.Y. publisher, was called 30 Minute meals (1999). She left Manhattan to manage pubs and posh restaurants in her home-zone of upstate New York. Soon she began working at a food equipment store in Albany and taught a series of cooking classes there based on the 30-minute meal concept. This class was featured on the local news. She then launched her own weekly 30-minute-meal segment on the news. Ray took off in the national media on the Food Network beginning in November, 2001 with 30 Minute Meals. Since then she’s added $40 A Day (2002) where she travels to various towns and manages to eat in restaurants for a day on $40. (Big deal. I can do that on $10 a day by hitting the all-you-can-eat luncheon buffet at Tempting Tandoor of India and bringing a few ziplock baggies.) Inside Dish premiered in 2004 and Tasty Travels in 2005. Like Oprah and Martha Stewart, she and her media handlers are heavily into promoting her as a brand and thus she has her own glossy lifestyle magazine full of heavily art-directed photos of Rachael plus tips on livin’ the Ray way. It’s called Everyday with Rachael Ray. She’s also published a whole bunch of books packed with innovative recipes. (Like Emeril, she surely has a kitchen full of R&D chefs cranking out dishes that fit the Rachael Ray style. “Okay, team, today let’s see if we can make a perky Italian sausage wrap with zesty pesto the way Rachael would. You know the drill: prep time is under 30 minutes.”)  Her books include Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals for Kids: Cooking Rocks! Four of the New York Times best-selling cookbooks in 2005 were written by Ray.

The appeal of Ray is that she’s perky, funny (sort of), and seems real for a media star. My own idea of real however is closer that provided by literate gonzo-cynics like Anthony Bourdian. Bourdain would never do a show called Tasty Travels. He's the Hunter Thompson of the food and travel TV-celeb world. He might do a show called Tormented Travels. He would take along books by experts on the soul like Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Bukowski, and Kerouac, and quote from their works as he explores the world.

In an interview with Page Rockwell of Slate in June, 2006, Bourdain said that the Food Network features “bobble-heads” and, when asked for details as to who they are, said, “Rachael Ray. She's paid more and is more popular [than Emeril], and I see a day when the executives say, we don't need Emeril anymore, even though he built their network. They'll replace him with some industry-created freakozoid who's been grown from a seedling into a recognized brand. When you look at Sandra Lee or Rachael Ray or some of the new shows like "Calorie Commando" that are just vomit-inducing -- at least Emeril worked his way up and has a real restaurant empire.”

He added, “If I ever saw her getting trashed on Old Crow, pistol-whipping a vegan after a bar crawl, I would think, "That's an interesting woman. I would like to know her."

Ray's not into the Bill Clintonesque "I feel your pain" mode of operation. She's more into the Bushesque "I feel no pain" mode. And she seems to epitomize the Bushesque “I don’t reflect on anything, I just DO stuff” approach to life.

In that sense, Ray reflects our times, our media mini-mind, a pervasive American non-intellectualism. In recent years as SUVs and bright red boxes of fries and grotesque McMansions in the burbs moved toward supersized proportions and mindless consumption at the expense of the planet zoomed ever higher, the amount of real information offered in the media slimmed down. Some news stations began running promo spots prepared by big corporations as hard news and the Bush White House paid journalists to write approving articles and pass them off as real. Thus the tenor of thought in America today reflects Bush’s damn-the-consequences-full-steam-ahead outlook. “If I say things are fine, they are fine.” And, “Yee-haw, got mah head buried in the sand fellow ostrichs! The war is going great. Mission accomplished. We’re winning! Hold on, let me ask Rummy or Turd Blossum what winning means. Who’s Turd Blossum? Why, that’s my pet name for Carl Rove.”

In keeping with the Bush-era mood of vapid media promo, Charming Doughboy and fellow Food Network star Mario Batali praised the Rachael Ray revolution in an April, 2006 article in Time, claiming that “In fewer than five years, Rachael Ray, 38, has radically changed the way America cooks dinner.” Somehow, Mario, I question that. I suspect that frozen dinners cooked in minutes the microwave have not yet been edged out by dishes like Ray’s veal meatballs and pasta soup that require 30 minutes to prepare, minimum. He added that “At book signings and public appearances, I have seen her fans faint, tremble, mumble, moan and ultimately hit the front of the line and embrace their food hero, repeating her mantras such as "let's run a knife through it" and "easy peasy" like Catholics at Sunday Mass.”

Wow, those are some bizarre mantas. They sound like the original plans for the two wars we’re losing, “Easy peasy,” and “let’s run a knife through it.” Without meaning to, Batali made a really great point: media stars have become objects of devotion, not reflection. Many who zone out in front of the tube while scarfing a microwaved frozen dinner also gobble the media bullshit like devout Catholics accepting the Pope’s latest decrees. No thought, just belief, faith. “It’s all gonna be okay,” say dozens of reborn father figures ranging from popes to news talking heads to men in the highest offices of government as an illegal war in Iraq costing hundreds of billions begins to look a heck of a lot like a rerun of Vietnam.

As for Rachael, America’s latest media megastar, just keep it perky, baby, and as the world overheats and the wars rage on, we will shed no tears! And if we’re lucky we'll remember your tips on how to clear the clutter when guests drop by.