What's UP with Rachel Ray?

I love Rachel Ray's 30 minutes from start to finish real time cooking show. I love everything about it including her peppy personality, the slightly hoarse voice that never pauses for a breath while she chops and zaps her way through piles of veggies, sammies, pastas, chicken breasts. This morning I turned on her morning show on NBC and she had a Valentine's Day segment that just did me in. Crystal champagne flute gifts for audience members, a suggestioon to frame a menu from a favorite restaurant where you had a memorable meal with your beloved and then cook something based on that menu. I just wanted to scream. Instead, I crunched harder on my toasted almonds and rolled my eyeballs so hard I almost dislocated them from my head.

What's up Rachel sweeheart? Didn't you hear about Haiti and the President's State of the Union address? Crytal champagne flutes indeed ! Yes, I know you're just a cook and an entertainer, but would it hurt to tone down the luxury romantic thingy just a tad? It seems almost, well, no, it IS disprespectful of all those in the world without food, a roof, medical care, income, hope. How about you have a low budget show where you encourage viewers and audiences to put their Valentine's Day budget towards medical supplies and food for kids in Haiti? How's that for an act of love? We, who eat our hearts to death can afford to cut back on the candies and crystal flutes don't you think? I'm about the go to the local farmers' market and look for untainted foods. I take it for granted that my water will be clean, can hardly move a wire hanger without jamming up the clothes in my closet and have the luxury of chomping on pretoasted presliced almonds, blueberries and yoghurt while I watch tv in my warm slippers and robe. Talk to me Rachel, tell me how you care, wake me up to something more than self-centered rose colored views of relationship. Relate instead to those who are without anything, can we please, just for a bit? What, bored with it already? Well the agony goes on and will go on, and we won't be able to staunch the hemmorhage of pain with rose petals on our lustful pillows. If you prick your finger on a Valentine's Day rose thorn, I say, good. Good for you to be reminded for a second of something that hurts just a little and know that others would be grateful to have so tiny a problem, would trade places with any of us, that means you reading this, me writing this and anyone we know. So just shut the heck up Ms. Ray and get back to being the Real Rachel, the one I used to love so much.