E-Mail This Article to a Friend Throw down Jeffery Steingarten vs food myths, Kurt Cobain vs Master P, and more

Steingarten at the CPL

Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten momentarily shocked his audience at the Cambridge Public Library a week ago last Tuesday by announcing that he’d become a vegetarian. That’s Jeffrey Steingarten the self-proclaimed omnivore, the man who fears no food, be it bugs or bratwurst, and whose first book was called The Man Who Ate Everything. He had just returned from India, where he’d been the guest of a Brahmin family who, true to their religion and their caste, had never eaten meat or drunk alcohol. And Steingarten reported that he’d been completely satisfied by the delicious vegetarian meals his hosts had served him. But he did allow that he expected his meat-free diet to end as soon as he and his friend K. Dun Gifford (founder of the non-profit food-and-nutrition foundation Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, and Steingarten’s interlocutor at the CPL) headed out to Harvard Square for dinner after the reading.

Don’t think for a minute that Steingarten had abided by a vegetarian diet for health reasons (even though he said he’d lost about 10 pounds on the trip). Over the next two hours at the CPL, he debunked one generally held belief about food and nutrition after another, maintaining that cholesterol does not cause heart attacks, salt does not contribute to high blood pressure, raw milk and unpasteurized cheese do not increase the risk of listeriosis or other food-borne illnesses, and MSG does not cause headaches. He drew on any number of studies and statistics, showing, for instance, that the countries with the highest rate of cheese consumption — France and Greece — are the least affected by heart attacks. "Probably the least hazardous thing you can do for your health is eat cheese — in any condition."

Steingarten also went after food allergies. "You may remember that about four years ago, everyone was lactose intolerant." Although he didn’t deny the existence — or the danger — of lactose intolerance, he pointed out how most often these intolerances and allergies are hysteria-borne epidemics, citing, for instance, a movement in Lexington and Concord to create "peanut-free schools."

The most outraged reader mail he’s ever received, he reported, came after he’d described his attempts to make French fries the Belgian way ("the Belgians invented French fries"), by using horse fat. In his desire to find horse fat — unavailable in the United States and illegal to import — he became so obsessed that "when I would pass a horse in Central Park or see one under a policeman I would start to salivate." The most vituperative letter writer was a woman who owned recreational horses — which he opined would inevitably be slaughtered for food. "America is the largest exporter of horse meat for human consumption," he pointed out, adding, "Unless you’re a vegetarian, you’re responsible for the slaughter of animals."

That would include the Steingarten who talked about his favorite blood sausage and how he’d always found "abhorrent" the notion of eating pig’s blood but "now I would drink it like Coke." He referred to the piece reprinted in his current paperback, It Must’ve Been Something I Ate (Anchor), "It Takes a Village To Kill a Pig." So intense had his interest in the source of carnivores’ meals become that "finally my editor had to tell me that Vogue is not a magazine about animal slaughter."

— Jon Garelick

Kurt Cobain vs. Master P

In 1998, Meira Levinson, a young white woman who’d recently gotten her doctorate in political theory at Oxford, was teaching in an all-black public middle school in Atlanta. "I coached the academic quiz-bowl team," she recalls in an e-mail, "and in our first match, we competed against one of the only ‘white’ schools in the district. There was a question in which the teams had to identify, among others, Kurt Cobain. None of the 35 students from my school had ever heard of him, or of Nirvana or grunge. The white kids from the other school thought this was hilarious. When I explained to my students that almost all white people under 25 would know who Kurt Cobain was, just like my students all knew who Master P (the reigning hip-hop artist that year) was, my students laughed at me." They laughed because they thought it was funny that Levinson didn’t understand what they believed to be self-evident: everybody knew who Master P was. "Sure, Kurt Cobain might be known in the white world, but Master P was known by everyone. I was too clueless, they thought, to realize how much more famous Master P was than Kurt Cobain."

Levinson, who is the author of The Demands of Liberal Education (Oxford University Press), is spending the semester as a Radcliffe University fellow while writing a book on multicultural education as it’s practiced in all-minority settings, and this Wednesday she’ll draw on that work-in-progress for a talk titled "Kurt Cobain vs. Master P: A Critical Analysis of Multicultural Education in Segregated and Diverse Schools." At issue are the broader preconceptions of multiculturalism. She uses the Kurt/Master P anecdote "to set up a set of questions and issues about multicultural education, especially (but not only) as implemented in de facto segregated, non-white schools. For example, what does my students’ lack of awareness about what counts as mainstream knowledge say about their future educational and economic opportunities?" She notes that her students "knew a great deal of black history but knew nothing about John F. Kennedy or Lyndon Baines Johnson — certainly two important whites in the civil-rights movement." And she wonders whether these kinds of gaps in their knowledge mean that they’ll be "potentially hampered in their ability to succeed in predominantly white (or even just non-predominantly black) settings."

As a result, she argues, "maybe ‘multicultural education’ in that school — an all-black school in an all-black neighborhood — should focus on teaching students about white culture, history, literature, etc." Which is, of course, a radical notion — it will scarcely be easy to persuade black teachers, students, parents, and administrators that they need to focus on white history. She also suggests that policy makers have heaped so many aims into the dream of multicultural education that they are "usually not satisfiable simultaneously," and that these goals should be prioritized — and customized rather than standardized — according to the needs of particular school systems.

With much more attention being paid these days to the role of standardized knowledge tests in schools and the workplace, Levinson’s ideas about multicultural education could be a way to level the playing field. She’s also sensitive to the broader goals of multiculturalism but isn’t sure that current conceptions are particularly effective: "I also argue that multicultural education doesn’t necessarily promote tolerance."

Meira Levinson will deliver "Kurt Cobain vs. Master P: A Critical Analysis of Multicultural Education in Segregated and Diverse Schools" this Wednesday, November 12, at 4 p.m. at the Bunting Quadrangle, 34 Concord Avenue in Cambridge. It’s free and open to the public; call (617) 495-8212.

— Carly Carioli

J’accuse II?

Documentaries don’t usually pack your local multiplex, but we’re told that in France moviegoers have been standing in line to get into Décryptage, the 2002 film from Philippe Bensoussan and Jacques Tarnero that charges the mainstream French media with blaming Israel for the second Intifada and promoting the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe. Tarnero has stated, "We have nothing against criticism of the policies of the government of the State of Israel. But what we have seen for two years now, and under the appearance of political criticism, is just demonization, defamation, and denunciation of Israel."

In turn, Bensoussan and Tarnero have been charged with turning out Jewish propaganda. You’ll have a chance to judge for yourself when Décryptage makes its American debut this Sunday, November 9, at 4 p.m. in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Remis Auditorium. What’s more, following the 100-minute film, which is in French with English subtitles, a panel comprising New Republic editor-in-chief Marty Peretz, Atlantic Monthly senior editor Scott Stossel, and the Phoenix’s own media critic, Dan Kennedy, will convene to discuss whether the French (and for that matter the American) media are in fact anti-Israeli. Adam Seligman, professor of religion at Boston University, will moderate. The MFA is at 465 Huntington Avenue, and admission is $10; you can order on-line at www.ticketweb.com, or call (866) 468-7619 or the MFA box office at (617) 369-3306, or visit the box office in person.

Décryptage will also show next Sunday, November 16, at 1 p.m. at the West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street in Newton. Tickets will be available at the cinema beginning at noon, but the West Newton recommends you buy them in advance at www.ticketweb.com.

— Jeffrey Gantz