Jimmy (and) Deen

If I could only watch one tv channel, I might very well pick the Food Network. Even though or maybe because I don't really cook I love watching Good Eats, Iron Chef (the Japanese original is waaay better than the American wanna-be) Ham on the Street, The Hungry Detective, Unwrapped, Emeril Lagasse and of course Rachel Ray.

Granted, the channel's usually on in the background, and every host save one is white (some extremely so--it's got to be part of a deliberate demographic decision). But the network's done a good job of putting together a mix of easy-to-experience programming.

One person I've never liked much is Paula Deen--she's always struck me as a little too much Southern hokey. And her sons, now with their own show, are just spoiled good-old-boys.

But I like Paula now, after watching her with Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. Yup, the ex-president of the United States was on her show, cooking and making easy small talk.

She was appropriately respectful--even if she oddly called him Mr. Jimmy--yet obviously was having a ball with her fellow Georgian. They finished the show holding hands, eating a meal on the Carters' couch, as she delivered an emotional tribute, calling him the greatest humanitarian in the world today.

As for President Carter... what a great guy. He seemed totally at ease rolling out dough for biscuits; seems to know his way around the kitchen. But then again, he's always been a down-to-earth, hands-on person, sometimes to his detriment (i.e., his personal involvement in who was scheduled to play when on the White House tennis court; for a fascinating look at this anecdote and Carter's personality, see Match Point to the Media).

Like his nemesis Ronald Reagan, Carter is definitely a much more complicated and thus interesting guy than the caricature most people carry around of him. He was not only deeply religious--in an absolutely appropriate way--but also, as reflected in his days as a Navy nuclear submarine commander, a steely, stubborn man who stuck by his principles and expected others to hold themselves to similarly high, professional standards.

In some ways he was let down by the less-exceptional people around him, in particular the foreign leaders whom he trusted to care about their people's interests as much as he did.

As for his legacy with the American people, it's too bad he didn't take a page from Bill Moyers, his fellow Southern liberal Baptist, and learn the supreme importance of image and communication in politics. Americans want a president who seems presidential. Carter, post-Watergate, purposefully tried to strip the office of its pomp and hauteur, but in the process lost his bully pulpit and made himself seem a mere technocrat.

Oh well; history will remember him more kindly than many of us do, he may well have been the most decent man to hold the job since Abraham Lincoln.

And heck, not too many other countries where you can turn on the tube and see your ex-supremeo leader wearing an apron, with flour on his hands.






Photos of Jimmy Carter from PBS' American Experience's telling photo album.