I'm just going to get this out of the way early. I HATE RACHAEL RAY!!! I hate her perkiness, her special little colloquialisms and, most of all, her food. She's the queen of mediocrity and she embraces that. If I never heard the following words ever again, I would die a happy man:- "EVOO, that's extra virgin olive oil!"
- "Delish!"
- "Yum-0!"
- "GB" (garbage bowl)
I think Anthony Bourdain has masterfully summed up the contempt many of us feel toward her, so in his own words, Anthony Bourdain on Rachael Ray:
Complain all you want. It's like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can't cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She's a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that "Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!" Wallowing in your own crapulence on yourCheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, "Hell...I could do that. I ain't gonna...but I could--if I wanted! Now where's my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?" Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. "You're doing just fine. You don't even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing...Just sit there. Have another Triscuit..Sleep...sleep..."
