Anthony Bourdain is a charitable guy. (Yes, really.)

Travel Channel

Typically, bickering among television personalities just isn't important. It's petty, highly subjective opinions exchanged between overblown characters who have an audience, and the current Mason-Dixon Line food fight between Food Network regular Paula Deen and Anthony Bourdain of the Travel Channel isn't all that different. 

Although, on at least one point I can safely say Deen is very wrong.

Responding to Bourdain's TV Guide interview, in which he called Deen "The worst, most dangerous person to America ..." for her unhealthy food and corporate connections, 

Deen told the NY Post:

"It's not all about the cooking, but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks. I have no idea what Anthony has done to contribute besides being irritable."

Clearly, Deen hasn't watched Bourdain's show.

Through his food-related travel show, "No Reservations," Bourdain has focused attention on millions of people who struggle just to survive, both home and abroad. No, they didn't get a hot meal, but their plight received attention, exposure and, hopefully, consideration.

"No Reservations" viewers have learned about the human side of conflict in Beirut, poverty in Brazil, mind-bending disaster in Japan and the lingering scars of war and genocide in Cambodia. This season' episode on Haiti was, frankly, the best piece of journalism (yes, journalism) about post-earthquake Haiti by any television source. And even in the United States, Bourdain devoted entire episodes to post-Katrina New Orleans and to the people of Cleveland (whose plight, it turns out, is living in Cleveland).

Don't get me wrong; I'm not nominating Bourdain for sainthood by any stretch. But any show that promotes awareness of other cultures, other countries, other people -- at a time when it's more needed than ever -- trumps the latest recipe for oyster-cornbread stuffing anytime.