On Bill Moyers Journal last night, the conversation with food expert Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals, In Defense Of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) was extremely revealing, not only about the subject of food and its complex relationship with issues from global warming to childhood obesity, but also with the larger patterns of how power works and how new thinking is kept marginalized-even in an atmosphere of "change." Indeed, in its own way, this program threw more light on the recent debates over policy and personnel in the Obama Administration than almost anything I can think of ostensibly written on the subject.
Take this, for example, not even from the dialogue, but just from the introduction:
BILL MOYERS: For a brief moment during the campaign, reformers thought Barack Obama might include agriculture in the "agenda of change" he would take to Washington. He told TIME magazine that the way we produce our food "is partly contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs." The farm lobby roared in protest. Obama buckled, took it back, and said he was "simply paraphrasing an article he read."
Ah, yes - but what an article! Here it is: nine pages in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE on October 12. An open letter to the future "Farmer in Chief" - from one of the country's leading experts on food - Michael Pollan. Significant progress on health care, energy independence, and climate change, Pollan told the candidates, depends on something you haven't talked about at all - food.
That article triggered such a response that an online movement has sprung up calling on President-elect Obama to name Michael Pollan Secretary of Agriculture.
Fat chance of that! Pollan's a smart guy. He knows that the Department of Agriculture is agribusiness home turf. He wouldn't stand a chance there-and he said so, directly to Moyers. It's an example of hegemony, pure and simple, and though Pollan never used the word, it's obvious that he understands it well.
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