I while ago (I refuse to look it up and confirm my own suspicion that it’s been months), when Alice Waters was being raked over organically-grown chimney-lighter-started coals for being an elitist who lives in a dreamland where everyone in America has enough time to shop daily and enough money to spend six dollars on a basket of strawberries, I said I wanted to address the issue as I see it.
I made several attempts. Some were long rambling affairs with plenty of digressions; had they been hand-written and sent to a local paper, they would surely have been forwarded to the FBI. Another was tighter, but just didn’t seem to make my point; yet another had too many qualifiers in it in an attempt to not offend. In a nutshell, they were all pretty much crap.
I have decided instead to write something off the cuff, limiting myself to no more than ten paragraphs, and just hoping for the best.
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The argument is that people such as Alice Waters who extol the virtues of buying organic produce, locally- and humanely-raised meats and dairy, and cooking the majority of your own food, are out of touch elitists who have no idea what day to day life is like for the average person: they overestimate how much time and how much money these people have.
And, invariably those critic always point to some hypothetical single, working mother living in a suburb with no green market, dairy, or ranch within hundreds of miles. It should be obvious to anyone that no one is talking about people living in dire circumstances when they suggest these kind of lifestyle changes; they are speaking of the middle class because the middle class has always been where change has begun.
That having been worked out, let’s examine the middle class. Per household, we have an average of 1.9 cars, 2.7 televisions, computers come in at about 2, approximately 50% of those household contain at least one video game console, and the homes themselves average 2400 square feet.
We spend on average $30,000 on our weddings, $1600 on summer vacations, and $1200 per year on electronics—approxomately half of which is to replace items still functioning.
No one who does this is considered elitist in this country. But someone who suggests that you feed your family food that is free of pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, foods that do not make us reliant upon other countries, foods that bring people to the family table where a lifetime of memories are created—these people are called elitists.
Well, fuck you.
4 responses so far ↓
Jenny Robin // Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Funny I should read this now, just having returned from the grocery store with Cage Free, Free Roaming Nesting Hens Eggs. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? They were such a pretty brown that I just had to buy them. I desperately want to make french toast for myself for breakfast tomorrow.
apremerson // Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 3:07 pm
That sounds good. I haven’t had that in a while.
Shan // Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I need a job…
apremerson // Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Is that a general statement, Shan, or is that so you can afford expensive berries and/or an i-pod?
Or, are my hypothetical single mother minus the working part of that scenario?
Like gas stations in rural Texas after 10 pm, comments are closed.