Comments Posted By Bridey
Displaying 1 To 2 Of 2 Comments
I'm a fat broad, and I've been talking about the war on fat people for years, saying exactly what you just said: It's about control. And that is all it has ever been about.
It started with the demonization of smokers, of course. Smoking is an easy target -- it's often ugly and it can be intrusive, even if nine-tenths of the stuff that's spread around about "secondhand smoke" is crap. And when the nannies started reaching into private businesses and workplaces, and, in my fine home state, automobiles, everybody'd been so nicely indoctrinated -- "Smokers don't care about their children!" "Smokers use up too much health care!" -- that the program moved along just fine.
In fact, the anti-smoking campaign had gone over so fabulously well that it was time to pick a new target. Fat people are, obviously, highly visible, and many people (even fat people) find us at least as ugly and intrusive as smoking. And the concept of "secondhand fat" has been floated already. So who was going to protest when the government declared war on us, and launched a vast and expensive campaign of propaganda against us? A few already-marginalized fat people?
So now the state has concluded that, just as it has a compelling interest in controlling smokers, it has a compelling interest in every damn thing you put in your mouth. "Fat people don't care about their children!" (Heard what's happening lately to fat people who try to adopt? Or about fat kids being taken out of their parents' homes?) "Fat people use up too much health care!"
And as the nannies settle in to monitoring, and harassing, and denying health care -- and who knows what else? -- to fat people, it'll be time to pick a new target.
Who do you think it will be? Will they decide alcohol is the new most evil thing in the whole world? Surely people who drink cost the health care system something extra. And how about people who keep having babies? Surely they're going to get way too much state-funded health care.
Or promiscuous people! Sexual behavior is sacrosanct and above criticism now, of course, but things do change, and we -- or, rather, you, since fat people will live sex-free for fear that we may reproduce -- may someday have to regularly prove yourself disease-free and duly provided with contraceptives before you can have sex with your (properly registered) partner.
Oh, yes, I'm just exaggerating, and the smokers can all just quit, and the fat people can all get skinny! Then, problem solved, the whole driving force for state interference in individuals' lives will vanish, since it's no longer needed! Because that's exactly how politicians work!
Right.
Comment Posted By Bridey On 2.02.2008 @ 02:30
ANOTHER PERPLEXING BUSH APPOINTMENT
Like the previous poster, I know nothing about this guy, but I assume that, as dean of a college, he is a bit more sophisticated than to go about telling those who are not fundamentalist Christians that they're going to hell.
And even if he believes it, so what? People believe all kinds of things without its affecting their ability to deal capably with the real world. Why so afraid of Christians? (I'm Catholic myself, and therefore doomed by the standards of many fundamentalists. Yet working with fundamentalists bothers me not at all.)
Comment Posted By Bridey On 29.11.2005 @ 00:36
