I see Food Network shows occasionally, about as much as I watch the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Maybe I'm just a fool (actually, I am!), maybe I've seen too much of each channel, but some of their star personalities start melding into each other until the TBN and the FN personalities are indistinguishable. The viewers for each certainly are: fanatic about shows and individuals, dogmatic in their beliefs, and furious whenever outsiders criticize their heroes.
This is just a partial, obvious list:
*Guy Fieri and Paula Deen are Paul and Jan Crouch: The four exude sappy, faux down-home wisdom, although Fieri's dose is that of the bro and not the Southern old guard. Each keep distinctive hairstyles and travel the country to wild crowds. The women wear the pants in the relationship, even though it's platonic in each. And while Crouch paid off a guy to not spill the beans about an alleged homosexual affair, Fieri remains firmly is the closet as a guy whose real surname is the WASP-y Ferry.
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*Bobby Flay is Benny Hinn: Both are beefy men with full heads of hair, who draw cheering throngs for their alleged miracles–Hinn for his laying of hands, Flay for his Throwdown series where he tries to better local food favorites. Both have denied affairs–Flay with January Jones, Hinn with Paula White. And both, while charismatic in real life, are said to be assholes in person.
*Marc Summers is Joel Osteen: The full heads of hair (quick aside: what is it about these two networks that they hire men with such healthy follicles?). The gleaming white smiles. The perpetually squinting eyes. The calm, collected lectures (Osteen in his ministries, Summers in Unwrapped) that stand in contrast to the histrionics of their network contemporaries. Has anyone ever seen the two in the same room at the same time?
*Alton Brown is Robert Schuller: Brown is a born-again Christian and young, while Schuller has brought many to the Lord and old. How are they the same? Besides distinctive glasses, both are the multimedia superstars of their networks–Brown and Schuller with their television shows and books. And Brown is starting to tour nationally, just as Schuller has done for decades.
*Emeril Lagasse is John Hagee: Bombastic, wide men controversial even among the faithful for their ways. Preaching styles include a lot of hand movements, and distinctive accents.
