GET WOKE, GO BROKE: How Toxic Leftism Killed The Vibrant Bon Appetit YouTube Channel.
With its gleaming marble countertops and massive 35th-floor view from One World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, the “Test Kitchen” set was exactly the visual tonic America needed. Bon Appetit became the fastest-growing food-related channel on YouTube, enjoying 40 million monthly views, more than 5 million subscribers, and more than 5 billion minutes watched.
Bon Appetit’s cooking channel should have been one of the bright spots during the pandemic. It should have been a common, nonpolitical intersection where we could all just laugh about yet again ruining our attempt at latkes. At first, it was just that. The Bon Appetit crew adapted almost seamlessly from the high-rise to their home kitchens across the tri-state area. Gleaming stainless cooking surfaces were replaced with cramped quarters, but the stars still shone just as bright.
But in a flash, the “Friends” vibe was dead, and so was the Bon Appetit cooking channel.
The Woke Mob Comes for All
It was murdered in June 2020 by a furious spasm of wokism aimed at Bon Appetit and its publisher, Conde Nast. Both magazine and publisher were accused of insensitivity to employees of any color but peach. There were also accusations of “cultural insensitivity,” disparities in compensation, ill-treatment in the workplace, and tokenism.
The unraveling began just after the May 25 killing of George Floyd in police custody. The once-lionized editor of Bon Appetit, Adam Rapoport, resigned June 8 following the release of a photo taken 16 years ago, reportedly showing him in “brownface” at a costume party. He denied he had altered his face color, but continued internal denunciation made his continued leadership impossible. Weeks after the initial controversy, eight Bon Appetit “Test Kitchen” star chefs, the heart and soul of the show’s success, announced they would no longer appear on the program.
Like many other companies, Bon Appetit felt compelled to declare “solidarity” with the rapidly emerging Black Lives Matter movement, publishing, “Here at BA, we’re often talking about recipes, cooking techniques, and emerging restaurants … but we also understand that food is inherently political.”
The 5o-year old “the personal is political” argument of the would-be totalitarian left sounds much better in the original Italian: “Tutto all’interno dello stato, niente fuori dallo stato, nulla contro lo stato.” Meanwhile, back at Bon Appetit:
The second most popular video from the new era was the first Bon Appetit pushed out: “Test Kitchen” director Chris Morocco making “weeknight meatballs.” Between the simplistic cooking instructions and complaints about his missing blender, Morocco managed to create one of the saddest cooking videos ever committed to the internet.
From his new home in Pennsylvania, he looked sadly into the camera and gave some vague pledge of having feelings for what happened at Bon Appetit — then, on to boring meatballs. That video has 792,000 views. With rare exceptions — videos featuring Leone — everything since then has been a fraction of that.
As Iowahawk tweeted when Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz had the ill-conceived (and quickly discarded) notion that his clerks could lecture their customers on whatever racism they perceived that day:
