Tom Colicchio is a famous chef and TV personality. He is also an activist who advocates for healthier, saner government food policies. "Blah! Gah! Real Americans hate healthy, sane things!" sayeth the voice of the Real Americans.

That would be the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, naturally, this time in the form of "cooking instructor and food writer" Julie Kelly, who graces the page today with an anti-Colicchio screed with a thesis that can be summed up as, "Real Americans are stupid hicks who eat garbage and don't care about government waste and will die young from fast food-induced heart disease so why not just let them be like that?"

That is the right wing version of a populist viewpoint.

Kelly mocks—mocks!—Tom Colicchio for advocating for things like farm worker rights, and sustainable farming and fishing, and the humane treatment of food animals, and promoting locally sourced foods, and other elite things like that. (Only elites could care about farm workers, presumably.) She is also rather disgusted that Tom Colicchio—who runs an expensive restaurant!—would like to see more funding for food stamps in America. Elitist! The average American doesn't want to see their tax dollars wasted on food stamps—except for the 47 million Americans who are now on food stamps! In the space of two sentences, Kelly objects that 1) the food stamp program costs too much money now, and 2) "food prices are at an all-time high, further stretching millions of families."

Spotting direct logical contradictions is an elitist activity. Real American families demand complete ignorance of all but the most mundane facets of their lives!

Most home cooks need instruction, not more reasons to worry. They need to know how to make a quick marinara, not whether the tomatoes were locally sourced by kindly area farmers who overpay their migrant workers. They need to know how to season and cook a steak, not whether the steer ate genetically modified corn feed. They see food as a necessity, not a political cause or "about values and justice" as Mr. Colicchio said at TEDx.

So, Tom, with all due respect, please stick to your pots and pans. You actually have something to offer. If you want to advance the food movement, educate people on how to cook food. Period. And leave the proselytizing to the politicians.

Real Americans REJECT values and justice.

Real Americans KNOW that they must leave the thinking to the politicians.

Real Americans ONLY read the Wall Street Journal, and not the side of food packages.

[Photo: Getty]