I found last night’s episode to be the most infuriating in a while. In what undoubtedly promises to be a series of annoying nation’s capital tie-ins, the guest chef last night was the #2 chef from the White House, and the theme of the challenge was Michelle Obama’s healthy food initiative. (The quickfire was some silly stunt where the chefs were divided into teams of two, given a red-and-blue apron that tied them together and forced each to only use one hand. Why? Because they were asked to make a “bipartisandwich.” Padma even had some line about successful governments need to be bipartisan — just like successful chefs. This of course is idiotic, since good chefs do not need to be bipartisan. Indeed, there’s this famous phrase about too many chefs spoiling the soup, the point of which is that if you have more than one chef, you make too many compromises, hence destroying the dish. Hence bipartisanship is the enemy of good chefs. That may offer a clue as to why they’re called “chefs” — which means “chief” or “head” of the kitchen — instead “culinary consensus facilitator.” Also, I suppose it’s too much to expect the seemingly countless number of Obamaphiles in the competition to recognize that Padma’s ode to bipartisanship was properly speaking a swipe at Obama, since he hasn’t been bipartisan. But I digress.) Now, I have no problem with Michelle Obama’s effort to improve the diet of America’s kids. It is a perfectly sound and honorable first-lady initiative. Nor do I have a problem with Top Chef taking on the issue as a theme. They’ve done it before, so it would even be weird if they didn’t do it now. But Holy Crisco, Batman, the agitproppy sermonizing of the whole thing was infuriating: The crocodile tears, the quivering lips, the personal testimonials about how passionate the chefs are about the issue, the righteousness about our poor underfunded schools. But what was worse was the ignorance and innumeracy. Watching the show, you’d have no idea that D.C .public schools are among the best funded in the country ($25,000 or so per pupil — on par with D.C.’s most expensive private schools). The problem is they are among the worst run (though the current head of the schools, Michelle Rhee is doing heroic work). If kids are getting bad meals in D.C. public schools, it’s not because they’re being starved for resources it’s because the teachers’ unions and bloated bureaucrats running the schools are, quite literally, stealing food from the mouths of poor children. According to Top Chef, schools get a mere two dollars and change per student per meal. So the contestants were given two bucks and change per student to cook a nutritious meal for fifty kids. Here’s the problem. No one bothered to mention the fact that the schools buy in bulk at the wholesale level. Eggs are pretty cheap when you’re buying 10,000 per week. Asking the chefs to cook on the same per student budget was ludicrous. But hey, it’s a reality show and they’re supposed to put up with hardships. It’s not like it was Fear Factor and they were asked to eat larvae while reciting the alphabet backwards in Esperanto. But they kept using this low per-student amount to make it sound like the only reason public schools don’t serve more nutritious food is because school cafeterias are underfunded. They may be underfunded, but the fault doesn’t lie with American taxpayers whose consciousness needs to be raised. They pay more than enough already. The fault lies with incompetent bureaucrats, greedy unions, and cowardly politicians. I don’t expect the producers of Top Chef to make that case. It’s not what the show is for, and I’m not someone who wants to see even my own political views represented in cooking shows –because I don’t want to see any political views expressed in cooking shows. But if you are going to drag politics into cooking shows, you might as well try to get it close to right, or at least do no harm.