AOC's cooking live streams perfect the recipe for making politics palatable
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or talk up a storm about the minimum wage, healthcare and the existential struggle for democracy.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s latest Instagram live stream found the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress standing at a chopping board with two lemons and a plastic jug as she expounded her political philosophy.
“Both Democrats and Republicans,” she said, scooping up a lemon with her right hand, “when they indulge in these narratives of commonsense policies being radical,” – setting the lemon down on the board again – “what they’re trying to do is really shorten the window of what’s possible.”
A twee icing contest on The Great British Bake Off this is not. And as far as we know, Gordon Ramsay, Ina Garten and Nigella Lawson have never been heard to exclaim, “Shoutout to my fellow radicals!” as Ocasio-Cortez did last Thursday night.
But for anyone worried that politics might become a little too boring under Joe Biden’s presidency, “AOC”, as she is universally known, is bringing comfort food. The 31-year-old New York Democrat has gained a vast social media following with her intimate videos of cooking, fashion tips, furniture assembly and behind the scenes in Congress.
This may say something about a public craving for authenticity in politicians: Biden, Donald Trump and AOC’s mentor Bernie Sanders have it, as far as their supporters are concerned. Similarly Ocasio-Cortez, from a working-class family in the Bronx, comes over more like your relatable drinking buddy than a Washington stiff but combines it with a millennial’s instinct for social media and a timeless star quality.
But it is also proof that entertainment and politics have become mutually indistinguishable. The trend arguably began 60 years ago with the televised Kennedy v Nixon debates, received a boost from Bill Clinton playing saxophone on a late-night talkshow and reached its apotheosis with Trump, who went from reality TV host to reality TV president.
So Ocasio-Cortez offers a glimpse of where we’re heading. Her Instagram live streams typically begin with the type of bit that might feature on daytime TV before pivoting to policy. It is a technique that serves journalists, novelists and other storytellers well: first hook your audience with something engaging, then move on to the substantial idea you really want to talk about.
A cooking video last year began with Ocasio-Cortez in an unglamorous kitchen, rinsing rice in the sink. What are you making? asked viewers. The answer: chicken tikka masala. “I am missing ginger, which is a really big bummer,” she said, before fielding questions on everything from Medicare for All to presidential impeachments.
In last Thursday’s edition, lemons were a suitably sour match for OcasioCortez’s mood in a country where 3,000 people a day are dying from coronavirus, Congress has stalled for months over providing economic relief – and Biden appears in no hurry to put her progressive allies in his cabinet.
Wearing a “tax the rich” sweater, the congresswoman was visibly more angry and frustrated than usual. “If people think that the present day is like radical far left, they just haven’t even opened a book,” she said with expressive hand gestures. “Like, we had much more radicalism in the United States as recently as the 60s.
“We talk about how labour unions started in this country. That was radical. People died, people died in this country, it was almost like a war for the 40-hour work week and your weekends. And a lot of people died for these very basic economic rights. We can’t go back to that time.”
She added: “Doubling the minimum wage should be normal. Guaranteed healthcare should be normal. Trying to save our planet should be centrist politics.”
She became even more irate as she talked about Covid-19. Hands resting on a plastic jug, she said animatedly: “Here’s the thing that’s also a huge irony to me, is that all these Republicans and all these folks who were anti-shutdown are the same people who weren’t wearing masks who forced us to shut down in the first place.”
The final 12 words of that sentence came in a rapid staccato, accompanied by Ocasio-Cortez’s left hand clapping or chopping her right for emphasis. “I wanna see my family,” she said. “I haven’t seen my family in a year, like many of you all. I wanna be able to visit my friends without being scared and I wanna be able to hang out with my friends when it’s cold outside and not have to be outside.”
If anyone was depending on AOC