Posted on 03/25/2011 1:15:17 PM PDT by inflorida
The Make-a-Wish Foundation had to break some bad news to a 6-year-old cancer patient this week ... when Food Network star Ina Garten informed them she was too busy to cook a meal with the boy ... TMZ has learned.
A family member involved with the Make-A-Wish foundation tells us ... a little boy named Enzo was approached by the organization after he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia three years ago.
Enzo told Make-A-Wish ... he really wanted to cook with the "Barefoot Contessa" host because he would often watch the show with his mother while resting in bed.
M.A.W. approached Garten with the wish last year ... but at the time, she was unable to meet with Enzo due to a book tour. The organization urged Enzo to pick another wish, but he told them he wanted to wait until she becomes available.
We're told the organization went back to Ina this year ... but her team responded with a "definite no" ... once again, citing scheduling conflicts.
(Excerpt) Read more at tmz.com ...
My wife USED to watch that show all the time. I can promise you she won’t watch it ever again.
Poor sweetheart! The only reason I have ever wanted to be someone with a public talent or wealth is so I can help people on a one on one basis, like this. I know if I were a celebrity chef, I would make time. For shame!
You’d think they would jump at the chance to make it into a special episode.
idiots.
I’d rather have Miss DeLaurentis.
I don’t know anything about Ina Garten, but the kid’s family going to the press to attempt to smear her is really tacky.
Her only excuse for missing this is if her own child was dying in bed that day.
What a pig.
Sweet, and mostly sad. I would twist myself in knots to make this happen. I am not a celebrity chef but I have 5 decades of cooking experience and do some really good stuff. I would use my own resources to travel and cook with this kid.
In many, many ways....
You caught my wave.
Couldn’t the miserable bitch or her publicist have rearranged her schedule to accommodate this wish?
I can assure you that I will *never* watch her show again.
The woman lives in the Hamptons and calls herself a contessa. Enough said.
We like the Food Channel and have seen her show a few times. She strikes us as a snooty liberal.
Maybe she really was busy. It’s easy for non-celebs to question the lives of those in the spotlight. Make A Wish may be a great organization, but they shouldn’t use their sympathetic kids to hold celebrities hostage. And it is up to the kids’ parents to moderate the kids’ expectations.
I read it as if the family member was a relative of someone at TMZ and that that relative was associated with Make-A-Wish.
Kids in the Make A Wish system don’t have “expectations”.
It should be an honor to be selected as a child’s “wish”. Shame on Ina.
He must be poor. Ina doesn’t travel within 5 miles of a poor person. She has faaaabulous dinner parties every night with her gay interior design friends in the Hamptons.
No matter how busy you are anyone with a heart would find an hour or two for a very sick child that idolizes you.
What does that mean? I know they are sick, but maybe some of them don’t understand the implications of their wishes, in which case the parents need to let them know they may not get their first wish.
Now there's another reason to skip over even the listings of the Food Network.
I think you nailed her well. She’s one of the few on The Food Network that I just can’t watch. She gives me the impression who doesn’t ever smell.
Typical liberal, all talk and no action.
Really good publicity, or poisonous publicity. The choice is yours, BareFAT C**tessa.
Barefoot Contessa, you're a pig, and you'd better hope that you're never in a situation like the one faced by the kid. Wow, a dying fan, and you essentially flipped him the bird.
Karma's a bitch.
I’m guessing something like this takes more than an hour or two. I know the easy position here is to bash anyone who doesn’t do backward somersaults for every person that wants a favor from a celebrity. We really don’t know her reason for turning down the request.
S*** Out Of (Pot) Luck Dinner.
So? If celebs HAD TO agree to every little tear jerker story they couldn’t possibly fulfill such obligations.
It’s hard to believe that someone with a 300 pound heft can be so one dimensional. This comports exactly with my impression of this woman. sd
I been on TMZ live right now one of Harvey Levin reporters totally badmouth her LOL!
Infinitely better!
This looks like thuggery on the part of the Make-a-Wish foundation. Are they such a sacred cow that they can demand that everyone accede to their requests? They asked a private person to sign on to an act of charity and she Dec.ined, and now they are publicizing this. It doesn’t appear that she backed out of a commitment that she made to them or that she showed any disrespect to the child or the organization.
This is a story? Isn’t charity work supposed to be voluntary? Are we going to start smearing celebrities every time they turn down an invitation to appear at a benefit or decline a request for a donation, regardless of how generous they may be with their time and money?
I feel bad for the child, but this has the feel of a shakedown.
It's not like she was asked to cancel her vacation to stay home and run a WAR, or anything. NOTHING she does can be that important.
I have seen Make-A-Wish in action, up close and personal. I have witnessed the difference it made in a child's short life. I hope the memory of what she has done haunts her for the rest of her wretched life.
Sorry to sound rude, but the “Barefoot Contess” doesn’t have to do this. Personally, I would try to bend over backward if someone from “Make a Wish” asked me to do something and it surprises me that this chef won’t do it, but I’m not going to damn her for it. The parents need to calm down and work with the child to come up with another wish. And the organization should not bad mouth this chef or leak damaging information—that just hurts the program.
Sorry to sound rude, but the “Barefoot Contess” doesn’t have to do this. Personally, I would try to bend over backward if someone from “Make a Wish” asked me to do something and it surprises me that this chef won’t do it, but I’m not going to damn her for it. The parents need to calm down and work with the child to come up with another wish. And the organization should not bad mouth this chef or leak damaging information—that just hurts the program.
Ina Rosenberg Garten also served as hostess of the 16th Annual Hudson Peconic benefit for Planned Parenthood! Nice. Not only is she a pig, but a ghoul!
My wife attended a trade show in NYC as a member of the media.
She asked “contessa” if she could get a photo with her. Contessa sat behind a table in her trade show booth and said, “just don’t touch my table.” She then refused to look at the camera. She’s a horrible woman - very rude and condescending at events where she is supposed to be promoting herself. I can’t even imagine how bad she is when not on her best behavior.
The press is going after her (Ina Garten) because she’s an awful rude person who mistreats the media worse than she abuses her fans.
If you go to
barefootcontessa.com
scroll to the bottom and click on “contact us”
She answers the email she gets.
Start emailing her sponsors and cc her to them.
She’ll cave in a veil of crocodile tears.
Isn’t her hubby on Madison Avenue...doesn’t he have any PR experience.?
Don’t know the situation, don’t know the reasons why she would choose to decline, can’t make a judgment on that.
But making this a public matter is wrong. Unless there was a solid commitment and then a breach of one’s word, then no one should have know about it beyond those directly involved.
It’s none of the world’s business.
She’s an elitist lib. Her husband is a professor at NYU which should be telling. Her friends are all gay which also says a lot. She’s a bloated, fat fag hag that has no sympathy for the sick. They just take up space in her world.
Maybe she would of cooked for him if the kid was a gay floral designer!
Don’t you people know she’s a lefitst TWA.?
One of the worst.
Gads. You guys don’t even know who your enemies are.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OAh4Xl94vrU/SmaIYvjnPiI/AAAAAAAALvE/ZOZhgiYCfV0/s400/DSC_0024a.JPG
Originally employed as a low-level government aide, Ina Garten climbed the political ladder to the Office of Management and Budget and was assigned the position of budget analyst, which entailed writing the nuclear energy budget and policy papers on nuclear centrifuge plants for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
Garten left her government job in 1978 after spotting an ad for a 400-square-foot specialty food store in Westhampton Beach, New York. The store was named Barefoot Contessa. “My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating but it wasn’t me at all,” she told The New York Times four years later. She made a hasty decision to purchase the store after traveling to view it, and moved to New York to assume ownership and management. The store had been named by its original owner in tribute to the 1954 film starring Ava Gardner; Garten kept the name when she took over, as it meshed well with her idea of an “elegant but earthy” lifestyle.
Her husband, Jeffrey Garten, went on to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2005 and dean of the Yale School of Management. He is now the Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business at Yale. He can also frequently be seen on her cooking show, assisting his wife with simple tasks or sampling the dishes she has created.
After Johns Hopkins, Garten worked in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. He then went on to Wall Street, becoming a managing director of Lehman Brothers[1] and the Blackstone Group. At Lehman, he specialized in debt restructuring in Latin America. He also lived in Tokyo and directed and expanded the Asian investment banking business for that firm. At Blackstone he worked in the financial advisory and mergers and acquisitions arena.
The Gartens live in Southport, Connecticut, and East Hampton, New York.
They divide their time between Manhattan, East Hampton, and Paris.
She’s one of the worst.
Surrounded by a lot of people who are in the fudge packing business.
Someone, somewhere - needs to be making a list.
One day. One day.
Although I imagine He already is.
I can only hope we humans lack infinite patience.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OAh4Xl94vrU/SmaIYvjnPiI/AAAAAAAALvE/ZOZhgiYCfV0/s400/DSC_0024a.JPG
Originally employed as a low-level government aide, Ina Garten climbed the political ladder to the Office of Management and Budget and was assigned the position of budget analyst, which entailed writing the nuclear energy budget and policy papers on nuclear centrifuge plants for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
Garten left her government job in 1978 after spotting an ad for a 400-square-foot specialty food store in Westhampton Beach, New York. The store was named Barefoot Contessa. “My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating but it wasn’t me at all,” she told The New York Times four years later. She made a hasty decision to purchase the store after traveling to view it, and moved to New York to assume ownership and management. The store had been named by its original owner in tribute to the 1954 film starring Ava Gardner; Garten kept the name when she took over, as it meshed well with her idea of an “elegant but earthy” lifestyle.
Her husband, Jeffrey Garten, went on to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2005 and dean of the Yale School of Management. He is now the Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business at Yale. He can also frequently be seen on her cooking show, assisting his wife with simple tasks or sampling the dishes she has created.
After Johns Hopkins, Garten worked in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. He then went on to Wall Street, becoming a managing director of Lehman Brothers[1] and the Blackstone Group. At Lehman, he specialized in debt restructuring in Latin America. He also lived in Tokyo and directed and expanded the Asian investment banking business for that firm. At Blackstone he worked in the financial advisory and mergers and acquisitions arena.
The Gartens live in Southport, Connecticut, and East Hampton, New York.
They divide their time between Manhattan, East Hampton, and Paris.
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