Through creative use of e-mail, relentless inquiry and a persona carefully crafted around the protective mother archetype, Ms. O’Brien has emerged as a populist hero among parents who troll the Internet for any hint about why their children have food allergies.
The article notes that Robyn O'Brien has an MBA and gave up a finance career to raise her children. Yet the author tosses the monetary element out there as though the $56 dollars a day after taxes, would somehow be an incentive for someone to do this. Go find me a babysitter who will watch four kids for the afternoon for that price even in Denver.
There was no point to noting any money at all, except to suggest that somehow that is a factor. So much for investigating and reporting when a good twist can make something wholesome look tawdry, dang the sleazy media %$#@ bugs the living tar out of meme.
Following that with up with the snarky remark that O'Brien's persona is carefully crafted around a protective mother archetype, is a toss up in my eyes between the nastiest and most idiotic remark of the entire piece. There isn't a mother on the planet that needs to carefully craft the persona between the diapers and sleepless nights and the other demands that parenthood creates, it is thrust very sloppily on you.
Robyn O'Brien has four children under the age of eight and to add to that they have severe food allergies. Give me a break with an attack that suggests she is somehow leveraging her dedication as a mother and doing the site and the little lunchbags as some career maneuver. Maybe a Times writer thinks #30,00 grand is a haul but a finance MBA can do far better if money is really the objective.
The efforts that have been put forth to create ways to protect the kids and others like them speak for themselves. Only someone who has never known the horror of a small child in your care, faced with a life threatening condition, could be callous or ignorant enough to come out with that kind of jab.
My hope is that if Ms. Severson ever does find herself with a child that risks dying from a food ingredient, she has help more like Robyn O'Brein to give her tools to deal with the reality, rather than a cookbook that offers hope in the form of switching from margarine to Monsanto's VISTIVE™ low-linolenic soybeans, which can reduce or eliminate trans fats in processed soybean oil, for baking what are very likely Severson's gmo corn muffins.
http://www.monsanto.com/features/vistive_farmer.asp
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html
http://www.tenspeed.com/aboutus/tenspeed.htm
http://www.earthfarmfriendly.com/News/frustvenmilkmrkt-102606.html
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