I arrived in New York the day after President Obama's health bill had passed. Obama's smiling image was everywhere. The frown and furrowed brow of the previous few months had been replaced with a beam of relief. A week earlier he had been presented as a lame-duck, possibly one-term, president; now, suddenly, he was a man of historic achievement.

Not everyone subscribes to that view, of course. Republicans, who variously want Obama shot or impeached, retain hopes of repealing the bill when, it seems inevitably, they win back control of one or both of the Senate or House of Representatives in the November elections. There was dark and hysterical talk of government takeovers, dictatorships and "European-type socialism", one of the funniest phrases ever invented if you actually live in Europe.

From that European perspective, it was fascinating to see Obama's opposition first hand, if only to try to understand why there should be such intense hostility to the idea that tens of millions of uninsured people should be given protection and relief from huge medical bills. Partly it had to do with a refusal to support anything conceived by Obama; partly it came from resistance to the idea that richer people should pay more to help poorer people; mostly it seemed to stem from a fundamentalist ideological opposition to the idea of the government getting involved ? even in the most benign way ? with people's lives. That didn't just come from the politicians like Sarah Palin, whose speeches increasingly make George Bush look like JFK, but from the tens of thousands of "ordinary Americans" who showed up to see her speak at various rallies.

Of all the things I saw on television in the US, the one that explained and contextualised that opposition the best was a show that didn't mention the healthcare debate even once. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution might come from the reality tv stable, but as a way to understand the American psyche, the nation's obesity problem and the difficulties of ever overcoming it, it could hardly be bettered. It kept me in for two hours on a Friday night when I should have been out enjoying the sights and sounds of New York. If I was commissioning programmes for TV3, which loves its US reality tv, I wouldn't pass up on this one.

The format is similar to the show Oliver did for British tv a few years ago, when he shipped up in an inner city London school and tried to improve the quality of the dinners there. He met a certain amount of resistance, from some parents and from the dinner lady who actually had to cook his recipes. But slowly he wore down the opposition; the dinner lady became his biggest fan and, last week, it was confirmed that the exam results of the children involved had improved in the wake of their improved diets.

The connection between healthy food and healthy minds and bodies is only common sense, of course, but try telling that to the people of Huntington, West Virginia, the unhealthiest town in the USA and the one Jamie Oliver chose to visit. He quickly met with suspicion from some locals. The school was giving the children pizzas and chocolate for breakfast. "I have never seen pizza served for breakfast," he said, genuinely outraged. The dinner ladies, even more fearsome and resistant to change than their English equivalents, then began to cook chicken nuggets and processed mashed potato for lunch. Oliver later learnt that French fries are designated as a vegetable by the US authorities.

In the classroom, the children didn't recognise tomatoes or potatoes. They ate with their fingers and a spoon. Oliver tried to introduce knives and forks, to the consternation of one of the cooks. Was he really telling her that English children used knives and forks, she asked. When Oliver confirmed that this was the case, she demanded to see documentary evidence.

He was failing miserably by the end of the second episode. His Englishness, his outsiderness, didn't help, but it was clear that these Americans (let's not generalise and say all Americans) were hostile to being told what to do with their bodies or how to improve their health by foreigners, by their own government, by anybody. That way lies European-type socialism and dictatorship.

The right to eat your way to obesity and early death has become the new American dream. Likeable and all as he might be, Jamie Oliver doesn't stand a chance. Let's hope President Obama does.

They deserve to be shot... but Bertie gets off lightly

Much fuss greeted the Irish Daily Star's 'They Deserve To Be Shot' front page on Wednesday, which featured photos of Seán FitzPatrick and Michael Fingleton, two of the country's most unpopular gentlemen currently. I thought it was a good headline myself, accurately reflecting what many people feel about how their country has been destroyed by the greed, criminality and stupidity of a small group of people. The only complaint was that there wasn't also a picture of Bertie Ahern. The former Taoiseach got away lightly in all the abuse that was being handed out last week, although he is at least as guilty as Brian Cowen of economic treason. I'd draw the line at shooting Ahern, but should he not at least be taken in for questioning?

ddoyle@tribune.ie