Radio Free America: We need another Anthony Bourdain

Welcome to Radio Free America, Aaron Kleinman’s newsletter on stories that matter in state politics but aren’t getting enough attention. Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week? Sign up!

After the disastrous 2024 election, some commentators believed Democrats needed a Joe Rogan of the left. A guy’s guy who could leverage the power of streaming video and podcasting to change the hearts and minds of young men, who swung hard against the party in that election.

The good news for them is that we found a Joe Rogan of the left. The bad news? His name is Hasan Piker, and if he endorses you, then you have to spend the rest of the campaign saying you don’t share his views on 9/11 or Mao Zedong. 

It’s too bad they’re casting about for someone who will have vaguely liberal views while being willing to talk to young men about MMA, teach them about history and give them self-improvement advice. Because we already had a guy like that; his name was Anthony Bourdain.

You should watch the new Bourdain biopic, and not just because it is the second-best movie of the year. The fictional Bourdain in “Tony” is a timeless character. He’s an aspiring writer, a young, angry man, not as smart as he thinks he is, willing to ruin his life for a woman he barely knows. Bring him forward 50 years, and you’re looking at a potential Trump voter. 

Thankfully, the voyage of discovery in the movie leads him to embrace the community arising from the hospitality business and the worldliness required to become a chef. The actual Bourdain spent decades in the restaurant business, and his experience as both a chef and writer led to his bestselling book “Kitchen Confidential,” in which we all learned, among other things, to never order fish on Mondays. “Kitchen Confidential” was so popular it landed him a show on the Travel Channel.

And “No Reservations” was more political than you remember. Its first episode was titled “Paris: Why the French Don’t Suck.” This was a less-than subtle-rebuke toward right-wing culture at the time, which consisted of the National Review calling the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” and its audience barking like seals with a fish waved in front of them.

I was 20 years old when the show premiered, and the culture at the time wasn’t what you’d call woke. It seemed to be a nexus of megachurches, GMC Tahoes and Walmarts, with a lot of casual homophobia thrown in for good measure. Bourdain was trying to shock the country out of its cultural torpor and show that with an open mind, a better life was possible. Not just restaurants but travel, new experiences and learning about the world. He helped get me to put away my trucker hat, shave my soul patch and engage with the rest of humanity.

I had hit the millennial vibe shift, where living the good life was eating well and traveling broadly. We weren’t obsessed with flaunting wealth — probably because after the Great Recession, we had none. Yes, it led to some humiliating trends (truffle oil, Tulum, etc.), but it was still a humanistic and communitarian ethos. Bourdain seemed to be at the center of it all, with The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner calling him the best-known celebrity in America.

Bourdain reached his peak of fame in 2016 when he filmed an episode of “Parts Unknown” in Vietnam with Barack Obama. It aired just a month and a half before Donald Trump won his first presidential election and seemingly put Obama’s era of liberal internationalism to an end. Two years later, Bourdain was dead. And soon thereafter, a global pandemic rocked the travel and restaurant industries.

Now, America once again finds itself in a cultural torpor. Instead of megachurches, GMC Tahoes and Walmart, we have MAGA rallies, Cybertrucks and DraftKings. We’re bogged down in another pointless war in the Middle East. AI seems to be eating everything, including books. I don’t think we can lean on Twitch streamers to fix this.

The counter to this ignorance, as Bourdain showed us, is knowledge and experience. After all, that’s how he won over Rogan! We can’t replace Anthony Bourdain, but we can recreate him in the aggregate. Twenty years after his first show premiered, the barrier for entry onto people’s screens has never been lower. It’s time to flood the zone with people like him. Elevate voices who are authentic, erudite, liberal and, most importantly, know how to write. 

That was the final scene of “No Reservations.” Not an explicitly political statement, but a win for the culture. Let’s start racking those up again.

---

AROUND AMERICA

• The biggest election news from Tuesday night was the special election where Pennsylvania Democrats flipped a state House seat that Donald Trump won by 18 points in 2024. The 12th District used to be represented by Daryl Metcalfe, who was MAGA before MAGA existed. But like many exurban areas, it’s moving to the left. It’ll be hard to hold onto this seat in November (though turnout was high for a special), but it certainly seems like a national 13-point shift is in play.

• As for the primaries, these are the stories that you might have missed
  • The ugliest primary in the country is over: Randy Fine defeated Dan Bilzerian in the Republican primary for Florida’s 6th Congressional District. This contest showed that few candidates in the MAGA coalition want anything resembling peace in Israel.
  • Debbie Wasserman Schultz is like a bad penny, blocking the political ascent of Luther Campbell (though Campbell himself is plenty to blame, as he barely raised any money here) in Florida’s 20th Congressional District.
  • In addition to Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrats voted to return Kim Daniels, James Bush, and Daphne Campbell to office. That state is the graveyard of empires.
  • Wyoming Republicans seem to have done a better job than Florida Democrats, voting out at least 14 members of the far-right Freedom Caucus.
  • Alaska is still counting votes, but Friend of RFA Joel Wertheimer thinks Mary Petlola will have won a majority of votes when they’re done.

• North Carolina Republicans are trying yet another power grab. A proposed bill would give their right-wing state supreme court chief Paul Newby, of the Newby family, the right to remove any lower court judge for any reason. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed the bill, but if Republicans can win over enough sour grapes Democrats who lost their primaries, they can override it.
  

• In Hawaii, Republican Bob McDermott won a tiebreaker against incumbent state Sen. Kurt Fevella after his name was drawn out of a hat. McDermott is now the GOP nominee for the Oahu district. And he has a, shall we say, colorful history in state politics.
  

• Drain Lake Powell. As Ryan Cooper notes, it serves little purpose other than letting you stretch your legs on the way to the Grand Canyon. Drain it.

---

INTERNET STUFF I LIKED THIS WEEK

College football Internet is the best Internet, and you’d be a fool to stay on the sidelines. (Speaking of fools on the sidelines, Ole Miss brought back Joe Judge, for some reason.) Of course, you might have gone to a dreary liberal arts school without a team, or perhaps aren’t on speaking terms with your alma mater for some reason. How will you enjoy the action this year?

Don’t fret, the good folks at Channel 6 have you covered with the only college football season preview that you need. For the bargain price of $24.98, it costs less than a burrito taxi. It’s your best chance to enjoy Saturdays this fall, unless you have hobbies or something.

---

BOOK CLUB

I’ve been listening to and reading Patrick Wyman’s work for a decade now, and one point he really drives home is that history is a lot messier than we think. Instead of the slow progress of civilization that you see in “Sid Meier’s Civilization,” advances are made in fits and starts, with plenty of dead ends and backslides to boot. In “Lost Worlds,” Wyman turns his analytical eye toward the ancient past. The story wasn’t as simple as hunter gatherers trading in their bows for plows, or even that their way of life was doomed once agriculture emerged. It’ll make you see the ancient past in a new light, and it’s one of the most fascinating books I read all year.

---

HELP US OUT

Last week, the Internet cried out in one voice as if in unison — I really should go back and binge “Lodge 49.” Message received, I’ll get on that once I’m finished seeing Jack Reacher pummel dudes into a bloody pulp. Which, it should be noted, I will never get tired of.

As for this week, once again, I need some food help. I got a deal on three gallons of extra virgin olive oil, but it expires in early October. In the meantime, what are some recipes that go heavy on the EVOO (though not to an extent that it would alarm my doctor, who can be a real pill about cholesterol)? Email me and tell me what you think!

Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week? Sign up!