Guy Fieri – Joanne C. Gerstner

I call Guy Fieri “Gui”, aka French-Canadian hockey player style, to be funny. It’s more my way of making him more exotic, elevating him from being a burned out Motley Crue/Warrant/Whitesnake/Damn Yankees roadie. For as much as his bleached tips and cliches drive me up a wall, I have come here to defend him.

A tiny defense, as you will.

I sense the world is taking an unfair turn, blaming him for the debacle the Food Network has become.

I don’t think that’s fair. It’s not Gui’s fault that the people who program the network would rather do a bunch of stupid reality-game shows than actual food.

Gui was recently trashed in Salon, being blamed for everything. I can’t blame the guy for hosting 6 shows, if they’re offering you the work, and you can do it, why not? Fame is fleeting, and cashing in now is smart. He has a new steakhouse open, and Philly.com liked it. (Cough, cough, sounds like he lent his name to the venture and didn’t have much to do with menu planning. Hence good?) And his website says it is guyfieri.KOM. Save us.

The Food Network remains a clueless bastion of stupidity-chasing. Unless I Gui has turned into the truly all-powerful unseen hand – he doesn’t do the marketing, programming, production or concepting of the once-smart network.

So leave Gui alone – no hanging him for the stuff he’s not responsible for.

Oh Food Network…I don’t know what to say, other than to speak from the heart. We’ve had a long relationship, going back to Molto Mario, the original Iron Chef, and Emeril before he went Live! era. It was the heady, early days of “Food TV”, where chefs weren’t celebrities yet, they didn’t have to have your vaunted “culinary point of view” like this stooge, and everything wasn’t some contrived game show with Guy Fieri. The chefs were still a little awkward, learning how to do this TV thing. But they knew how to cook, they were real, and no cults of personality had yet formed. Heck, Emeril had not yet even had his own sitcom, or Bobby Flay had not showed up on Law and Order yet.

I am old-school. I like watching “chop and dump” shows like the Barefoot Contessa and Giada at Home. I like learning new things and seeing how to cook differently. I care deeply that Ina makes something to Jeffrey’s liking.

But lately, I find watching the Food Network makes me feel stupid. And worse yet for you, I turn the channel a lot. I don’t care about a “Cupcake Wars”, (a title that is patently insulting, war is nothing to joke about. Really? A war? C’mon. Go visit a V.A. hospital and see what a war really means), some silly show starring a boy band-turned-reality show hack on recreating Twinkies, or best yet, a seemingly endless loop of Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-in and Dives”. The first 100 episodes were cute, Guy, but I can’t take any more. It all looks the same. (As an aside, how has Fieri’s hair not fallen out from the toxic cocktail of bleach he must be continuously dunking it in? My sympathy for his scalp. Oww.)

So Food Network, I am sorry to say, we’re breaking up. It’s not you, it’s me. (Uh, I think really it is you, but I want to be nice.) No reality shows, none of the other game show crap. Bob and Susie, your programming acumen is clearly not for people like me anymore.

I may allow myself to cheat at the gym with Chopped (yay Ted Allen), but only if there are not celebrities on it. Alton Brown will be a case-by-case basis, but only if he is cooking and being smart – not trying to be creepy mean (which I know he is probably not in real life.)

Giada and the Contessa are always a go, but I suspect they may not be in your line-up much longer as chefs, since everything has to be about being a “personality” who doesn’t cook.

We shall see. But Food Network, all the best. We were great while we lasted. But I’m moving on and letting you go be who you need to be.

Allez Cuisine.

The 411…

Joanne C. Gerstner is an award-winning multimedia journalist, author, college professor and Fulbright specialist. She extensively covers, and is an expert, on sports, concussions in sports, the global business of athletics, women in media, and journalism/social media for outlets such as The New York Times, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the BBC, USA Today, ESPN and Detroit News.

She is the co-author of “Back in the Game: Why Concussion Doesn’t Have to End Your Athletic Career”, with Dr. Jeff Kutcher (Oxford University Publishing, 2016), an Amazon No. 1 hot seller on youth sports and concussions. She has also written five children’s books.

In 2019, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer appointed her to the state’s first Women in Sports Task Force. The group served three-years, making recommendations for legislation and other private sector changes in the state to assist girls and women in playing sports, and finding careers in athletics.

Gerstner is a sought-after expert, speaker and panelist, appearing at SXSW Sports, CoSIDA, the University of Michigan, Jacobs Foundation, the American Academy of Neurology’s Concussion conference, the Association for Women in Sports Media, and numerous media appearances (BBC, NPR, etc.)

She is the Brandt Fellow Sports Journalist in Residence at the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, and has won fellowships with Knight-Wallace at the University of Michigan (2012-2013), Jacobs Foundation (2015) and Steve Saler-Medill (1995).

Gerstner is the recipient of Oakland University’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2020); the Association for Women in Sports Media’s Ann Miller Award (2014); Faculty Impact Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University (2017); the inaugural MSU ComArtsSci Brandt Fellowship for Faculty Excellence (2021), and the Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communications Detroit chapter (2017). She was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021.

Tag: Guy Fieri

Sticking up for Guy Fieri…

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