The Economist April 30th 2022 Culture 75Lula’s Workers’ Party, whenanoilboom
offered bounteous revenues andpartyoffi
cials centralised corruption.
There is much truth in this.Systematic
corruption has contributedto anexpen
sive state in Brazil that offerspoorpublic
services. Lava Jato turned upcasesofgro
tesque greed. Sérgio Cabral,a formergo
vernor of Rio de Janeiro nowinprison,
pocketed around $100m, levying 5%on
construction contracts and embezzling
budgets from health care to prisonmeals.
Yet the authors push theirthesistoofar.
They never discuss in detailhowmuchof
the bribery involved personalenrichment
and how much campaign finance. They
attribute adverse judicial decisions and
budget cuts to conspiracy. Brazil’sSupreme
Court has shown greater independence
than they give it credit for. Buttheirpleas
for the independence of the FederalPolice,
and for more resources for theforce,are
well made. They are particularlyscathing
about the distorted prioritiesimposedby
the war on drugs: tens of thousandsofpoor
Brazilians have been lockedupwhilethe
crimes of the rich and powerfulhaveoften
gone unpunished.
Some Brazilians believedthatMrMoro
was simply out to get Lula. Therewasno
evidence the former presidenthadoccu
pied the penthouse (there wasstronger
proof in another case involvinga country
retreat). Lula’s conviction, upheldonap
peal, prevented him from runninginan
election in 2018 and paved thewayforJair
Bolsonaro, a rightwing populist,towin
the presidency. Suspicion of Mr Moro’s
motives was aroused when hereleasedda
maging pleabargaining testimonyimpli
cating Lula days before thevote. Itwas
reinforced when the judge agreedto be
come Mr Bolsonaro’s justice minister.
Since 2019 the tables have turned
against Lava Jato. Leaked messagesshowed
that Mr Moro broke the rules ofjudicialim
partiality by coaching Mr Dallagnol.Bya
narrow majority the SupremeCourt re
versed its previous ruling thattheguilty
should be imprisoned aftera firstappeal
and thus freed Lula. The courtalsoruled
that Mr Moro had exceeded hisjurisdiction
in pursuing the former presidentformat
ters not directly related to Petrobras.
Although he campaignedagainstcor
ruption, Mr Bolsonaro has shownlittlein
terest in fighting it. He appointeda public
prosecutor and a federal policechiefwho
do his bidding. The pandemicandeco
nomic troubles have displacedcorruption
in the public mind. Many of thosejailedfor
Lava Jato are agitating for theirrelease.
One lasting benefit of thescandalisa
reform that bars corporate politicaldona
tions. In other respects, the struggle
against institutionalised crime has not
yielded the fruits that Mr Pontes,MrAnsel
mo and many others hoped for.n
Worldina dishThe buttered pragmatist
J
uliachilddiedalmost 18 yearsago,at
the enviable age of 91, having done more
to enrich American culinary life than any
one before or since. She wrote many books,
including her twovolume landmark “Mas
tering the Art of French Cooking”; present
ed numerous television series; and won a
cabinet full of awards, including the Presi
dential Medal of Freedom. Her life in food
was public—so is her private life, thanks to
several biographies and films. There seems
to be little left to say about her.
And yet hbo Max and Sky Atlantic are
airing a new series, “Julia”, dramatising the
start of her tv career. On the Food Network,
contestants on “The Julia Child Challenge”
make Child’s recipes in a replica of her
kitchen. And Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, a
historian at Smith College, recently pub
lished “Warming Up Julia Child”, about the
friends and colleagues who nurtured her
career. Why the sudden burst of interest?
One answer is that contemporary popu
lar culture loves familiar successes—wit
ness the current fad for remakes, reboots
and the everexpanding superhero “uni
verses”. Child was wildly popular, with a
literary and television career spanning the
20th century’s last four decades. Studios
and publishers imagine that she has le
gions of fans who will eagerly watch and
read anything about her.
But that is too cynical by half. The real
answer is that Child lived a bold and event
ful life, capacious enough to offer nostal
gia to those who remember her and inspi
ration to those who do not. In effect, she
was a populariser of French cuisine—butthatcarries the implication that she some
how diluted it for the masses. In fact, her
recipes are not simple or dumbed down:
they are clear.
At heart she was a demystifier and a
pragmatist. She ensured that all her recipes
could be recreated in the average midcen
tury American home kitchen. She took
food seriously, but unlike generations of
men in white toques who cultivated impe
rious, remote demeanours, she had no pa
tience for cant or pomp. Cooking French
food does not require that the chef be
touched by God, or begin an apprentice
ship in childhood; it merely requires that
they follow a series of easily explicable
steps. In a letter to a friend written while
she was living in Paris, before she was fam
ous, she referred to France’s most es
teemed food writer as “a dogmatic meat
ball”. His insistence on rigid culinary rules
was “so damned typical, making a damned
mystery out of perfectly simple things”.
That line is quintessential Child:
straightforward, funny and confident in
the best sense. To earlier generations, she
was an emissary from the refined world of
French gastronomy. Today’s viewers may
see her, rightly, as a feminist icon who
broke into the thenoverwhelmingly male
worlds of haute cuisine and television de
spite having no professional experience in
either, on the strength of unfussy charm,
wit and hard work (producing “Mastering
the Art of French Cooking” took years, part
ly because she rigorously testedandre
fined the recipes to ensure they werefool
proof ). Those qualities are timeless.nWhat’s behind a revival of interest in Julia Child?