The Art of Politicizing Everything

I used Julia Child's French cookbook quite a lot when I was first married. The recipes made complicated dishes easy by explaining each step in detail. Almost like "DOS for Dummies" and similar books that used to be so popular for tech neophytes. I often wondered if the author of the first of those books was inspired by Julia's technique of breaking down each step and putting in lots of pictures and diagrams, but I digress.

We just came back from seeing, "Julia and Julie." What could have been a pleasant afternoon was spoiled for me by references to McCarthy, Julia's brutish father who loved McCarthy and wanted his daughters to marry tall Republicans and produce a bunch of children.

Stanley Tucci was totally miscast as a loving husband to Julia and perfectly cast as a smarmy left wing twerp who couldn't keep his politics out of the cook pots.

I didn't remember anything controversial about Julia Child or her husband. In fact, if asked, I'd probably have said that I didn't think she was married, so the references to Paul Child being hounded by McCarthy and being investigated for being a homosexual were jarring as were the explicit scenes in the conjugal bed. These scenes and references were decidedly out of place as was the throw-away line by Julie's boss that she's lucky he's not a Republican schmuck or she would have been fired for taking a day off.

I got news for Nora Ephron and the rest of the people who made this movie. You're all a bunch of schmucks.

Instead of a movie celebrating the astonishing, especially for the time, accomplishment of one woman almost single-handedly changing American's perception of food, we get one celebrating the small old left wing shibboleths of McCarthy, homophobes, and bad Republicans -- even Eisenhower got a back handed slap.

Meryl Streep, much as I decry her politics, is an actress of almost mythic ability. She absolutely became Julia Child. So much so, that her annoying voice and mannerisms reminded me why I never liked watching Julia Child's television show.