Washington was shaken last week by the abrupt departure of four White House officials. No, the presidential aides were not fired for attempting to cover-up the growing Whitewater scandal. Those dismissals should come this week.
White House Chef Pierre Chambrin and three other members of the kitchen staff were asked to resign. In fact, the only senior culinary aide to survive the bloody massacre was pastry chef Roland Mesnier.
So, what was the cause of the conflict between the Clintons and the kitchen personnel? "I have a different concept of the food," Chambrin said, reported in USA Today.
President Bill Clinton, however, did not appear to have any complaints about Chambrin's culinary style.
In typical Slick Willie style, he avoided responsibility for the decision. "It's not my deal. I'm an indiscriminate eater. Not that I don't enjoy fine food. But I can't comment because I don't know anything about it," he said, The New York Times reports.
Instead, the source of the agitation appears to be First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ever since the Clintons took office, the First Lady and Chambrin have been at odds over the White House menu. While Chambrin enjoys preparing classical French cuisine, Hillary prefers low-calorie American food.
According to White House staffers, the First Lady encouraged Chambrin to reinvent his cuisine with little success.
"Pierre is incapable of doing low fat," an anonymous official said. "He truly doesn't understand and isn't willing to be taught. His desk is covered with cookbooks, but they are all in French and they are all by dead people."
Hillary figured it was time to expel the influence of dead white European males from the kitchen as well as from the classroom. To replace Chambrin, she will undoubtedly find a chef with a more politically correct perspective.
The frontrunner for the position seems to be Alice Waters, owner of a restaurant in that hotbed of 1960s radicalism, Berkeley, California. Dubbed by The New York Times as the "mother of modern American cooking," Waters has been an outspoken voice in favor of overhauling the White House menu.
Hillary and Waters would seem to complement each other quite nicely. While the First Lady has been crusading for the right to quality health care, Waters has been fighting for the right to quality food. After the 1992 election, Waters authored a joint letter from a group of American chefs and sent it to the Clintons.
In the message, the chefs declared that "good food, pure and wholesome, should be not just a privilege for the few but a right for everyone. Good food nourishes not just the body, but the entire community."
Campaigning for the job after Chambrin's departure, Waters explained the new White House chef should be "someone who would get that kitchen garden going on the White House lawn, someone who is principled, and who believes in live, nutritious food."
Hillary said, "I think she's been quite a breakthrough figure in American cuisine, in the kind of food she's prepared, in the kind of positions she's taken. I think what she says makes a lot of sense."
As when Hillary wandered into her psychobabble regarding the "politics of meaning," I can't help but ask: does she have any idea what she's saying? What "positions" has Waters taken on what issues? How can a chef be "principled"? And how does one truly "believe in live, nutritious food"?
Ask yourself, do foreign dignitaries attending state dinners really want to eat vegetables grown in the Rose Garden? If I were invited to a formal occasion at the White House, I would certainly not want to be served a meal consisting of tofu, kelp and a homegrown organic vegetable salad.
It is time for the President to take control of his own kitchen. Given his eating habits, I can't imagine he would choose Alice Waters or someone of her ilk to be the next White House Chef. Somehow I can't see Waters preparing a hamburger and an order of french fries for Bill.
Just look at it as an issue of fairness. If Hillary is allowed to pick the Cabinet officers, shouldn't she at least let Bill pick out the person in charge of stocking the kitchen cabinets?
