Tonight I read a post by DougJ at balloon-juice, who linked to a post by Matt Yglesias at Thinkprogress complaining about a post by Julie Gunlock on the National Review. (that's a lot of blogospheric navelgazing, but bear with me).
So what does Julie Gunlock, a former Republican congressional staffer who is now on the wingnut welfare circuit, complain about?
Let's just quote Matt:
Julie Gunlock complains at NRO that "food snobs" are ruining America by serving unduly fancy food at soup kitchens. It’s actually rare that conservatives get to combined their hatred of poor people with their hatred of "cultural elites" in a single argument, so Gunlock gets so busy dishing out the sarcasm that she can’t quite seem to deliver the "so what?" point where we see who is being harmed by this alleged trend.
And one of the arguments Julie makes is:
This attitude is not limited to the shelters in our nation’s capital. A recent meal served at the Meet Each Need with Dignity (MEND) kitchen in Pacoima, Calif., included pumpkin soup seasoned with browned butter and sage, red-wine barbecue beef on handmade puff pastry, artichoke hearts with meatballs marinara, roasted-garlic-and-turnip mashed potatoes, all topped off with fresh blueberries and sour cream. No wonder these places need a bailout.
Of course research is not the wingnuts' strongest point, since that involves education and logic and sciency stuff, so a quick trip by poster Zuzu's Petals to the MEND website tells us that MEND is
Privately funded - NO government grants
So much for the government bail out. But that is not all.
I was wondering if the NRO made this up completely, and decided that because of the rather specific menu items, a quick search should clarify that. And indeed within a minute, a search on "artichoke hearts with meatballs marinara" came back with a few links to the wingnut echo chamber, but also with the original article about the food at MEND, published late March in the LA Daily News.
And what do we learn there about this "wasteful gourmet soup kitchen"?
While the largest social service agency in the San Fernando Valley has always been generous, it took a former restaurant chef Richard Weinroth to revamp MEND's food offerings for the poor.
The stocky chef with the wispy goatee makes do with food donated from local markets. In five months, he's spent just $200 of the MEND budget - on such items as plastic forks - despite serving such dishes as chicken parmigiana with leek-and-garlic mashed potatoes and ham with cranberry-mustard sauce.
He spent $125 of his own dough on bright cafeteria trays to cut down on trash. Taped to his office wall is a primer, "Profits in the Garbage Can: The Elimination of Kitchen Waste."
So instead of lauding this great guy Richard Weinroth, who could probably make a lot of money running his own restaurant or working as a chef somewhere else, but instead chooses to serve the unlucky amongst us, and very creatively shows that you can provide people with good food in soup kitchens without much money or any government support at all (which should really appeal to the right), the NRO decide to put on the ideological blinkers, crank up the lie machine, rave against liberal fancy food and spout out the talking points.
So cheers for Richard Weinroth and the people at MEND who decide to hire him and give him the opportunity to do some fantastic work, and jeers for some more epic wingnut fail.
You can donate to MEND here.
And a hat tip to electricgrendel in the comments, who points out what struck me originally but I forgot to include, that a lot of the ingredients mentioned are cheap and not fancy at all: garlic, turnips, potatoes, pumpkin, meatballs. But I guess Julie Gunlock is so used to the DC bubble and wingnut welfare that she has no clue how much food costs in the real world outside fancy restaurants, and she certainly doesn't think that poor people should deserve any kind of nice food.
[EDIT]:
I found a comment from Richard Weinroth himself in the comment section of the LA Daily News article that I'd like to quote here in full:
I have had the pleasure of working at MEND for about 5 months, now...and it's a job I'd gladly do for free if I could afford it.
I understand the concern of the previous commentary, and we do not take that issue lightly.
One thing among many that the article neglected to point out is that only about ten percent of the people we serve on any given day are actually homeless, but so many are hardworking families often with two incomes that just can't make ends meet with what they're paid. MEND offers more programs than just our emergency food bank and soup kitchen. We offer medical and dental services on a donation basis for those that would otherwise go without, we offer computer skills courses, sewing classes and English classes as well. We try to make good food at our kitchen because we're also working on creating a culinary vocational training program for those interested in pursuing a career in the culinary arts.
The old adage has never been more apropos,'Give a man a fish, and you feed him lunch but if you teach a man to fish he'll never go hungry'.
I like to think we offer fishing lessons at MEND.
In addition, 99% of all work done at MEND is done by volunteers and we incredibly are fortunate to be in such a hardworking and active community wherein when so many people are losing their jobs...we see a big surge in volunteerism.
Truly, I'd rather err on the side of caution and help feed a few families that should maybe be trying a bit harder, than let those ones that can't seem to make ends meet send their children to school or to bed hungry.