Let’s Move – the latest hypocrisy from
the King and Queen of DoubleStandard Rule-by-Fiat-and-Innuendo.
Mooch’s cause celebre to reverse the trend of obesity and
diabetes in kids within one generation so that babies being born during
the last 3 years of her husband’s term can become adults who can
actually see their own shoes and don’t have to listen to their arteries
hardening while playing their mind-pablum video games.
She’s announced an ambitious strategy
involving celebrities, government, and private organizations to get
kids to become more physically active, better nourished, off their
butts, and slender.
She’s building something called the
“Partnership for a Healthier America” to analyze and work on the causes
of childhood obesity with advertising, school curricula, athletics,
food labels, and public service announcements designed to show children
what foods are good for them and which ones aren’t. (Uh . . .
Duh! Isn’t that the parents’ job?)
One of the tactics is to move food-package
nutrition labels to the front instead of the side or back and make the
fonts larger. Cups used at soft-drink fountain machines would
announce calorie content per container, as would canned and bottled
drinks.
Well, Bullshit! I can show her how to
reduce the waistlines of American kids in one generation: just
have HRH Obobo sign an EO making all mass media advertisement of foods
illegal and subject to heavy fines.
I mean, good grief! Is there a single
person alive in the US today who doesn’t know where the nearest
MacDonald’s or BK or Taco Bell or KFC or bodega or vending machine is
located? Anyone who has a computer or a smart fone or a TV
or who rides a bus or who picks up a magazine is constantly bombarded
by advertisements for burgers, fries, pizzas, colas, sugar-coated
cereals, pastries, tacos, burritos, steaks, hot dogs, chips, dips, and
all manner of crunchy, salty, sweet, or fat snack items. Seems
pretty obvious to me that we’ve all got the freakin message.
And
it’s always beautiful people, in-crowd people, slender people, fun
people eating those burgers, those fries, those donuts, those
chimichangas; it’s never a fat kid or some porker wearing stretch pants
that she’s grown completely out of or some waddling 5-foot nothin
nebbish with zits and love handles. It’s non-stop power of
suggestion. Take away the print ads, the pop-ups, the billboards,
the TV commercials for fast food and non-nutritional breakfast items
like sugar-coated fluff and deep-fried cholesterol and kids will stop
packin on the padding in just a few months.
And take their goddam electronic games away
from ‘em and let ‘em play in the creeks, the vacant lots, the woods,
the parks, even the back yard . . . let ‘em get muddy, and scratched
up, and knocked on their butts and actually lose a game now and then to
get a taste of reality and they might try a little harder next time . .
. maybe even PRACTICE so they can get better at it.
And flunk a few of ‘em who don’t do their
work in school, let ‘em repeat a grade; make getting a driver’s permit
contingent on being in school with at least a C average; tell ‘em
they’re definitely NOT o.k. when they turn in a paper late or don’t do
homework or get half the questions wrong on a test. Tell ‘em
their delicate little fe-e-e-e-lings are the least of our friggin
worries about their welfare.
Of course doing all this would require first
getting rid of the teachers’ unions and watching a few kids die from
accidents rather than diabetes, but if the interminable and relentless
encouragement to eat all the wrong stuff were stopped and schools were
re-geared to prepare kids for real skills in the real world, we’d wind
up with fewer Fat Alberts and more Li’l Rascals. We’d see kids
going to doctors for busted arms and banged-up heads instead of insulin
prescription readjustments and ADHD medications. There’d be more
bandages and slings than needles and tablets.
If it has really become necessary for gubmint
to get involved in minimizing the obesity factor of health care, then
goddamit let’s do it right and eliminate the siren call of salt, fat,
and sugar from fast-food greasy spoons, cholesterol oases, and fructose
emporiums. If Their Royal Highnesses can rule by fiat without the
advice, consent, and approval of Congress, then let’s call up flank
speed on this attack and damn the burritos. Incidentally, if you
asked me how she really feels about the future of American children,
especially the non-African ones, I'd say this pretty much sums it up:
And while they’re at it, TRH might get rid of
that goddam Geico menagerie, Fred fucking Thompson’s reverse mortgage
spots, and Flo
Ron Metzger
