Every time I begin thinking that I've been in this business long enough to no longer be surprised by the depths of stupidity we encounter in American political debates, I am proven wrong yet again. That realization dawned on me anew this morning when I stumbled across a headline from HuffPo proclaiming that Fox News is being "mocked" because someone on that network was "attacking" Kamala Harris over some cooking videos she published on YouTube. With a deep sigh of resignation, I determined that I should probably look into this and figure out what was going on. (Spoiler alert: That was my first mistake.) What could be so bad about some cooking videos? And who would be upset about them and why? The "who" issue turned out to be Julie Banderas, one of the hosts of Outnumbered on Fox. I like Julie and I enjoy watching Outnumbered when I get the opportunity, so I thought I'd give her the benefit of the doubt and dig a little deeper. (Chalk that up as mistake number two.)
Conservatives continue to desperately seek ways to make Kamala Harris look bad, but Fox News picked a real doozy of a reason to hate the vice president: her cooking videos...Although Banderas was OK with the idea of a woman running for the presidency, she said the videos of Harris cooking aren’t “doing women any favors.”“Yes, it would be amazing to have a woman in the White House one day. That would be a huge glass ceiling shattered,” Banderas conceded before insisting she doesn’t ”want to hear about a White House, uh, president cooking.”
My initial guess had been that perhaps Harris had been cooking something particularly offensive, though I'm not sure what that might be unless it involved roadkill or adorable puppies. I then wondered if the Veep has been wasting her time producing and publishing cooking videos when she is ostensibly still the Vice President of the United States and supposedly responsible for some important issues such as border security and Artificial Intelligence guardrails, not to mention being knee-deep in a nascent presidential campaign.
Neither of those turned out to be the case, however. First of all, her YouTube cooking channel hasn't been updated since 2020, before she was anointed as the Veep, so this isn't a question of her wasting her time. Besides, how much home cooking does she really do at the Naval Observatory? Doesn't she have staff to take care of that, just like at the White House? (Unless all of the chefs quit, of course. She does have a massively high turnover rate in that regard.) As to the food itself, there was nothing offensive or disgusting about it, with nary a roadkill animal or adorable doggie to be seen. From the few examples I briefly reviewed, it was mostly just typical meals and snacks including cookies, sandwiches, and something called "masala dosa." (I'll confess, I had to go look that one up.) But really nothing "weird."
So what was Julie Banderas going on about? As far as I can tell, despite all of the discussion in conservative circles about the value of traditional nuclear families and the role of parents, Julie seemed to feel that a female presidential candidate shouldn't film herself working over a hot stove to prepare a meal. (Should we assume that it would be okay for Tim Walz to produce cooking videos because he has a Y chromosome?) She went on to basically admit that it is because Harris is a woman, with Julie proudly proclaiming "I don't cook!" She also pronounced herself to be "not domesticated whatsoever."
Let's snap out of it, people. The world is currently going up in flames far more badly than anything on Kamala Harris' stove. I'll embed the segment from Outnumbered below so you can judge for yourself, but this really seems like a big nothingburger, if you'll pardon the food reference.
