A New Bumper Sticker
I just happened to catch two women that I admire a great deal on television last night. Madeleine Albright was a guest on The Colbert Report. She stuns me with her knowledge about foreign affairs and I love that she is adamantly outspoken about the current situations occuring in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She sparred with Colbert, who if you haven't seen him yet plays a parody of Bill O'Reilly from Fox News and Colbert never leaves the diguise during the entire comedy newshow. It is very funny and absurd. But Madeleine had no problem being interviewed by a pretend buffoon while still appearing intelligent and humorous. One interesting tidbit about her is that her father was a professor of international relations at the University of Colorado and one of his favorite students was Condoleeza Rice. I heard an interview with both Albright and Rice, paralleling what they had learned from Madeleine's father yet each has such a different view of how international relations should be handled. It seemed like Madeleine found it be such a pardadox of how she ran the position of Secretary of State in comparison to how Condi is running it. I really enjoy listening to Madeleine's interviews and opinions.
The other fantastic episode I saw last night was a biography of Julia Child. How I love her. She was just an amazing woman who had a zest for life, food, family and good wine. After graduating from Smith she worked in the Office of Strategic Services, which sent her to India and China in 1944. While in India, she met Paul Cushing Child, a self-trained painter, linguist and jujitsu black belt. Ten years older and six inches shorter than the 6-foot-2 Julia, he became her husband and partner for the next 50 years. They left India to live in France, Julia soon became enamoured with the culinary artists that were so abundant at that time. She enrolled in the Cordon Bleu and then spent 10 YEARS writing the Master of French Cooking, which she co-wrote with one of her best friends. I remember watching her on PBS with my mother before I entered elementary school (she and Jack LaLane!) and I thought she was super goofy but charming. She had no problem screwing anything up in front of her audience and then unabashedly would sample her less than perfect looking dish that still tasted delicious. Who could forget Dan Akroyd's impression of her on SNL with the gushing hand while deboning a chicken? Julia thought it was hilarious. She was so cool with her enthusiasm and made anyone attempting a new recipe feel like it was better to try and not be perfect than to not try at all.
Albright/Child 2008! :-)
Thursday, April 5, 2007
