So for many years I found escape on TV in the Food Network, because aside from the fact I like food and cooking, I loved that it was a politics-free zone. There was no angry Bush bashing, no digs at Cheney and Rumsfeld. No moral equivalency. No screaming about the 2000 election. It was all about the joy of food and cooking and how it brings people together.

In a world so divided, it was a reminder that we can all get along if we can find some common ground.

I’m sure the chefs and personalities on the network have their political views. The fact that so many of them are based in New York would suggest most lean Democrat. But the beauty of that network is never, ever does anyone let on where their politics lie. We don’t need to know who they voted for because that has nothing to do with food. It’s not relevant. And that made it a refreshing place to be.

Notice I say “made.” Someone has sullied the garden and brought their politics in, and turned a popular show into an infomercial for one of her causes.

Michelle Obama, perhaps jealous of her husband’s constant face time on TV, has decided to start injecting herself in other people’s shows. First it was the Biggest Loser which aired the night Dems got their teeth kicked in in some major races. (irony ahoy)

Now she’s about to appear on the Food Network. And not just any show, the most popular show. Iron Chef America. And not just appear, nope. I’ll let the NY Times explain it.

In a collision of politics, cooking and popular culture, Michelle Obama will reveal the secret ingredient that the chefs must use in their televised cook-off: anything that grows in the White House garden (no further spoilers here, though). Mrs. Obama will also talk about her crusade to reduce childhood obesity through better school lunches, community gardens, farmers’ markets and exercise, which around the White House has the working title Healthy Kids Initiative.

The first lady’s cameo on “Iron Chef” is the latest example of her willingness to get her message across to the public in ways few of her predecessors would have considered.

Now, I can understand how she might want to be first ladylike and push her pet agenda, just as previous first ladies tackled such things as literacy and drug abuse. I also can’t blame the Food Network for wanting to have the First Lady on their show. It has to be good for ratings (or maybe it would have been six months ago, this airs in January. Oops!). The problem is, the Food Network is the last place I expected to see scolds talking about taking away snack from kids and making them broccoli. This is the place that celebrates pork fat, butter and sugar. It’s a haven from the Food Nazis who want us all to live on a diet of rice cakes and rain water.

The Obama Administration has been hostile to agriculture. From refusing to send water to California’s San Joaquin valley farmers to bills that would limit your rights as a home gardener. This while they are promoting “organic gardening.”

The Obamas love to stick their face everywhere, I’m sure the Cartoon Network and the Fishing Channel are next. The one place we probably won’t see them is the Military Channel. He’ll probably need more time to think about that.

Anyway, as a citizen I am lodging my protest. I don’t want the Food Network politicized. I don’t want the Obama administration starting to dictate diets to people there. What’s next, they put Paula Dean on a soy and rice milk diet? Enough!

The first thing that grabbed me was the character work. The hero, Julia Powell (her real life blog is here) is a foodie blogger played by Amy Adams. I’m used to watching Amy Adams over my kid’s shoulder in “Enchanted,” which plays in our house on continual loop. I didn’t know Amy knew how to turn down the volume and play a “plain-Jane, yet interesting”… but she’s awesome. This isn’t her usual glowing, perky role where she turns it on like a fire-hose. And she doesn’t turn invisible like when she played a piece of cardboard in “Doubt.”

Back to the characters because “J and J” is a feast of interesting, appealing people I haven’t seen chew up the screen like this in a long time. The real Julia Child is already a great character, but Streep not only personifies this larger than life personality, she pulls off hilarious physical acting. She’s a comedic presence that had our audience laughing with every scene. And she looks huge, just like the real Julia Child. As a 6′8″ fellow, I appreciated the height jokes like when Streep reclines in a bed only to have her feet extend well beyond the mattress.

But Streep shows us sides of Child we probably hadn’t seen before: her sexuality, her competitive spirit, and the mourning for children. How painfully ironic that her name was Child.

I don’t know how Streep does it, but she makes her jowls look bigger. Her hands look big and mannish. Her shoulders rounded so that she looks like she’s playing a man in drag, which is kind of how Child came off to me. A refrigerator in a dress.

Stanley Tucci was in another favorite food movie of mine, “Big Night.” My friends told me to see Big Night then go out for Italian food. My Beloved and I saw “J and J” on date night then went out for dinner. It was one of our better date nights… much better than the time I made her see “Mimic.” But guys, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a chick flick. It’s a people flick. I’d take anybody to see this and if they didn’t like it, they’d need therapy. Yeah, this is the first sure fire Oscar contender I saw this year. At least this is the one I’ll be rooting for when they award it to some movie about a transvestite who marries a 12-year-old boy then murders him because Republican Christians fired him from his job.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Stanley Tucci. He plays the nicest guy in the world. He’s a great, understated character to provide contrast to Streep’s living cartoon. Hats off to Chris Messina as Julie Powell’s long-suffering husband and Jane Lynch who plays Julia Child’s sister.

This is for Nora Ephron: stop wasting your time at Huffington Post and make more movies. As a married man, you’re one of the few who seem to get marriage… even men in marriage. You seem to like men, which is rare among women writers. As someone who writes graphic novels, you’re one of the few who gets what it’s like to long for a significant project to find its way to publisher. You get the narcissism of working on one’s craft while someone else is in the house being neglected for some great piece of art. As someone who knows his way around the kitchen, you get the love of cooking, experimenting with recipes, even shopping for ingredients. Finally, you get Julia Child… including details like her love of sending post cards.

My wife went through a phase when she became an airplane pilot in the ’90s where she studied great women of the last century. She stumbled on the biography of Child Appetite for Life by Noel Riley Fitch. So inspired was my Beloved that she mailed Julia a birthday greeting for her 88th birthday. A few weeks later, she received a hand written post card from Julia herself! We were both so excited and my Beloved went into a cooking phase where I was the benefactor.

Man, this makes me wanna cook something. Maybe I’ll try making beef bourguignon.

It is also good news if you love cucumbers, lettuce or just like to look at flowers. C02 is a natural fertilizer for plants, which allows them to grow faster, larger, produce greater yields and to live in drier climates. Warming of the climate is also good for plants. Warmer temperatures stimulate plant growth and provide longer growing seasons. Perhaps most importantly, more plant life provides more food for animals. All of which benefits human health, prosperity and happiness particularly if you like a little carne-asada with your salsa.

In addition to an abundance of food, there are other economic and societal benefits to “global warming.” A 2006 study showed that the “reduction of wintertime mortality would be several times larger than the increase in summertime heat-stress related mortality.” Economist Thomas Gale Moore calculated that “if temperatures were 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the U.S., 41,000 fewer people would die each year from respiratory and circulation diseases.”

In order to stop the earth from warming climate alarmists are like the Blues Brothers on a “mission from God” to save the planet by reducing levels of man made C02. It is one of the great ironies of the climate alarmists’ claim to superior virtue (to say nothing of intelligence) to that of climate realists: If they are successful in stopping the earth from warming (pause for laughter) they may limit the production of foodstuffs. And in their rush to transform the world economy in order to lower concentrations of a gas essential for human life, they are actually enacting policy that is actually detrimental to the poor and wanting. This is, of course, is bad news if you are destitute and hungry.

Consider the alarmists push to adopt bio fuels as a replacement for fossil fuel.

Bio fuels require a considerable amount of bio mass (the plant material converted to fuel) and that requires a lot of acreage. In order to avoid man-made global warming, the European Union decided to replace 5.75% of its fossil fuel usage with bio-fuels by 2010 and increase that amount by another 8% by 2015. In order to reach this target, Europe would have to use 14-27% of its agricultural land to reach this 5.75% target. Meeting the target requires significant imports from countries like Brazil and Indonesia.

What is the problem with poorer countries exporting bio mass to wealthier nations? Nothing if you don’t care if poor people eat. Even farmers in Indonesia want the best price for their crops. So when growing bio mass is more profitable than food, guess what they grow? The scarce farm land in these developing countries is used to produce fuel instead of food, which reduces the amount of food thus driving up the price.

We are not immune from market forces here in America. Jeff Rubin, a chief economist at CIBC World Markets, a bank based in Ottowa, Canada writes, the “diversion of an ever-increasing share of the American corn crop from human consumption and livestock feed to energy production is putting steady and unrelenting pressure on food prices.”

All this is not to say that bio fuels are bad or that there is no role for them to play in any comprehensive energy plan. Research in making ethanol production truly affordable by turning common garbage products into fuel is extremely promising. However, any energy policy that claims to be concerned with the poor and starving would not focus on policy that rations energy in order to avoid producing C02, but would instead be directed at increasing our capacity to create abundant, low-cost energy. Indeed our industrial and technological civilization depends upon it.

Dr. Willie Soon, chief science advisor at the Science and Public Policy Institute, writes that if through the misuse of “science and through misguided public fear and hysteria, mankind significantly rations and restricts the use of hydrocarbons, the worldwide increase in prosperity will stop. The result would be vast human suffering and the loss of hundreds of millions of human lives. Moreover, the prosperity of those in the developed countries would be greatly reduced.”

So much for the alarmists’ moral mandate!

Tragically, so much suffering all for the sake of reducing a completely natural, life essential atmospheric trace gas that has no causal effect on the natural life beneficial warming of the planet.

I say put on some sun glasses, have a margarita and pass the chips and salsa.

Joseph C. Phillips is the author of “He Talk Like a White Boy” available wherever books are sold.

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Brett Joshpe is co-author of the book Why You’re Wrong About the Right: Behind the Myths: The Surprising Truth About Conservatives (Simon & Schuster). He graduated from Harvard Law School and is currently General Counsel of The American Civics Exchange.

 1) The contestants were lame:

This season’s contestants generally fell into two categories: Utterly forgettable (Remember Jill?  Me neither!) and cartoonish caricatures of real people. Precious few competitors combined true cooking proficiency with compelling personality.  Most were one-dimensional: Stefan was an excellent chef who, despite being typecast as the villain, never moved me to the point of unadulterated loathing like Lisa did last year.  Pretty boy Jeff cooked creative and interesting food, but could not have been less interesting.  One got the sense that Jeff could literally burst into flames, and it wouldn’t evoke more than a shrug from him.  Fan favorite Fabio (you born, you be rais-ed, and you die) was extremely charming and funny, but he hardly won any challenges and was frequently on the chopping block. His Italian accent alone punched his ticket to the final four.  Even finalist Carla, who I was rooting for, frequently pushed the bounds of my patience with her food “love” philosophy and her over-the-top reactions to pretty much everything. 
 
2) The Judges:

Tom is easily the best judge because he oozes credibility.  I don’t have much of a beef with him.  The legs Padma is proficient at feigning sympathy when instructing the latest loser to “pack your knives and go,” as well as plugging the heck out of the Glad family of products.  The real problem this year was the departure of one judge, and the addition of another.  I am a big fan of Gail Simmons.  Come to think of it, am I the only one who finds her more appealing than Padma?  Anyone with me?  No?  Fine.  Anyway, when Gail took leave from the show to get married, I suspected that any replacement would be a step down.   British food critic Toby Young turned out to be a giant leap down.  Toby thought he was funny, but he wasn’t.  His permanent scowl came across as a forced shtick.  He also never appeared to really enjoy a single dish, which is remarkable considering the talent assembled in the “Top Chef” kitchen.  His “bad soup=the missing WMDs” line was groan-worthy.  Please, producers, banish him to “Hell’s Kitchen” or some other second-rate show.
 
3) Wasting New York City:

Aside from drawing on a series of impressive guest judges who happen to work in New York, this season could have been set anywhere in the country.  Last season, the show really adopted a Chicago flavor.  The chefs cooked for the Chicago Police Department, they catered a tailgate prior to a Bears game, they filmed an episode at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and an entire challenge was inspired by the famed ‘Second City’ comedy troupe.  This season was extremely sterile by comparison.  New York City, and the innumerable opportunities it could have afforded, went to waste.  If memory serves, there was one challenge involving the city’s ethnic neighborhoods in the very early going.  Beyond that, nada.  The show could have been taped on a studio lot.  What a disappointment.
 
4)  Hosea and Leah’s “romance”:

There’s a reason why I don’t watch any other shows on Bravo.  The endless promos for “Manly Millionaire Matchmaker” and “Real Housewives from Hell” continue to haunt my dreams.  My perception of reality television involves a lot of stupid, phony drama swirling in the personal lives of people I don’t care about.  The insufferable “romance” between Hosea and Leah crossed the line into TV wasteland territory.  The producers clearly thought, perhaps correctly, that many viewers might be intrigued that these two non-single contestants (Hosea: “I have a girlfriend.  I can’t do this.  Leah and I are just friends.”) were flirting so heavily.  I also suspect that one of my early favorites, Ariane, faced a premature elimination because producers wanted to keep both lovebirds in the mix.  The infamous “kiss” episode was especially heinous, complete with hidden cameras, drunk whispering, and 1970s porn music.  I began actively rooting for at least one of them to get the boot just to put an end to the uninteresting, ludicrously over-hyped sideshow. During the reunion show, a viewer’s email demanded to know if the two had hooked up post-production.  I’m pretty sure that my whole building could heard me bellow, “Who cares?!”
 
5.  The final result:

Don’t get me wrong, both episodes in New Orleans were really good.  The setting, challenges, and food were all tantalizing.  This was the “Top Chef” I had grown to know and love.  Sadly, though, the competition ended badly.   Most everyone seemed to be pulling for the eccentric, muppetish Carla, who’d come on strong during the show’s home stretch–and who seemed to be a genuinely nice person.  A similar consensus developed that Stefan, no matter how unlikeable he was, deserved the title of Top Chef.  He consistently put out the best food all season long.  No one else was close.  Hosea meanwhile had managed to slide through to the finals without really distinguishing himself over the course of the season.  He’d won a few challenges, but he’d also narrowly avoided the axe a few times.  The only things we really knew about Hosea were that he HAD A GIRLFRIEND, and that he really, really hated Stefan.  When all was said and done, maybe he cooked a slightly better meal than his nemesis in the final round.  (By the way, Carla, why the hootie-hell did you allow a past season loser to hijack your meal-planning process?)  Still, he seemed to be the least deserving of the three finalists to take home the grand prize. I’d gladly wager that his finale sous-chef, Richard from last season, could out-cook him 9 times out of 10.

Hosea is our Top Chef?  Really?  Season five, please pack your knives and go.