Amy and I went to Versailles last summer while touring around France, and I’ve seen that Marie Antoinette movie so I consider myself well-versed in the French aristocracy of the late 18th century.
Toronto Globe and Mail columnist John Doyle explored the same themes this morning in a review of a documentary about Ontario raw milk crusader Michael Schmidt which is being broadcast tonight on Wallyworld – sorry, Newsworld, Canada’s cable news program.
It’s a fascinating documentary with many passionate declarations on whether farmers should be allowed to sell raw milk and the public should be allowed to consume it. It’s rich in irony.
It’s also an enraging program, largely because the real issue is the existence of the urban bourgeoisie’s delusion of invincibility, ignorance about science and tendency to posture in order to justify selfishness.
Schmidt himself is a fascinating character, self-mythologizing relentlessly and shrewdly. He’s always in a hat or cap and presents himself as an artist. No doubt his little farm is clean and well-run, but when Schmidt and his cabal of celebrity-chef supporters appear together and prattle on about taste and claim to be against "big business," they’re just nitwits. …
The vulnerability of children is a key issue. Sure, adults are entitled to choice – but allowed the choice of giving unpasteurized milk to children, who have no choice? Call me peculiar, but the safety of children has nothing to do with the "nanny state" interfering in some alleged gourmand’s taste for dangerous foods. One reason the nanny state exists is to protect the young, the elderly and the vulnerable. …
Watching Schmidt and his supporters, I was reminded of the one of the phenomena of the Romantic period in Europe – all those pastoral elegies of the 1700s, in which the poet idealizes rustic life, especially the shepherd, for the enjoyment of aristocrats.
That phenomenon peaked, I suppose, in France, in the late 18th century, when it was a fad at the French court to play at being part of the pastoral world. Marie Antoinette liked nothing better than to pretend she was a shepherdess (that’s her Versailles farmhouse, right and below). It was an indulgent fantasy, very far removed from the reality of rustic life. Then came the Revolution. And little wonder. The raw-milk issue is about today’s Marie Antoinettes.
