August 14, 2008, - 1:28 pm
A Tale of Two Cooks: Julia Child v. Rachael Ray = Patriotism v. Vapid Capitalism
By Debbie Schlussel
I was never a huge fan of the late Julia Child because her voice annoyed me, and I didn’t like her fattening, buttery, rich style of cooking that mirrored the French. Still, no-one can deny her status as America’s great chef.
But I never knew much about her.
Now, there’s news that Child was a U.S. spy and worked for the predecessor of the CIA, the OSS–Office of Strategic Services–which helped fight the Nazis. That was when what became the left-wing CIA was actually a great, pro-America organization. And there were other celebs among the list of those who helped America, not today’s Sean Penn/Alec Baldwin screeds:
Before Julia Child became known to the world as a leading chef, she admitted at least one failing when applying for a job as a spy: impulsiveness.
At 28 as an advertising manager at W&J Sloane furniture store in Beverly Hills, Calif., Child clashed with new store managers and left her job abruptly.
“I made a tactical error and was out,” she explained in a handwritten note attached to her application to join the Office of Strategic Services, a World War II-era spy agency. “However, I learned a lot about advertising and wish I had been older and more experienced so that I could have handled the situation, as it was a most interesting position.”
Child was not yet married and was applying for the job under her maiden name, McWilliams, according to previously top-secret records released by the National Archives on Thursday. She was hired in the summer of 1942 for clerical work with the intelligence agency and later worked directly for OSS Director William Donovan, the personnel records show.
Details about Child’s background and nearly 24,000 other OSS employees are revealed in the newly released documents, withheld from public view as classified records for decades by the CIA.
The 750,000 documents identify the vast spy network managed by the OSS, which later became the CIA. President Franklin Roosevelt created the OSS, the country’s first centralized intelligence operation.
The OSS files offer details about other agents, including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and film actor Sterling Hayden.
Can you imagine today’s most famous American cook, Rachael Ray, actually doing something to help America? Never. It took a lot just to get her to stop wearing the Arab keffiyeh, the garb of Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers–the story broken by Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs.
I like her recipes, but let’s face it: Ray is a vapid creation of the Food Network and Oprah and syndicated TV. Julia Child was a product of years of crafting her culinary skills and cuisine. Where Child was the symbol of class and haute cuisine, Rachael Ray is a lowest-common-denominator-of-pop-culture chef. Sadly, Child would probably not have been a success today in the Rachael Ray world that we now live in, because she was not “attractive” or “TV friendly” enough.
Oh, and by the way, there is something Rachael Ray is apparently planning in order to make nice with extremist Muslim Arabs. And it, once again, contrasts with Julia Child’s patriotism and work for the OSS.
Stay tuned.
Check out the OSS personnel files from the National Archives.
Rachael Ray isn’t even a trained chef. She owes her success and fame to Oprah.
[PK: EXACTLY RIGHT, WHICH IS WHY I REFER TO HER AS A COOK AND NOT A CHEF. DS]
PrincessKaren on August 14, 2008 at 2:36 pm