Comments on: But really, I’m concerned about your HEALTH. Really.

By: Chicklet

Chicklet — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:47:42 +0000

“Heh. I originally read that as ‘Busty Hart.’”

Ah, the good old days in central Connecticut …

Preying Mantis, the column is for real. Here’s her blog:

http://www.betsysblog.com/

By: preying mantis

preying mantis — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:52:59 +0000

…the food culture? “This is a snack-free zone”? Seriously, the Betsy Hart piece is a joke, right?

By: Zuzu

Zuzu — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 04:16:16 +0000

Heh. I originally read that as “Busty Hart.”

By: Chicklet

Chicklet — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:44:31 +0000

Betsy Hart is convinced fat people are a threat to her innocent, precious children:

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=HART-07-26-07

By: Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:57:59 +0000

You know, there is a point where being obese — not just overweight, but obese — does affect your health. I’m talking about the 400+ area that very few people get to. If you’re bedridden because your legs can no longer support your weight, that’s not good, and your family should probably do some kind of intervention to get you the medical and psychological help that you need.

However, if you see a fat person walking down the street, they don’t have that problem. If you wouldn’t walk up to a person in a wheelchair and give them medical advice, don’t do it to a fat person, either.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:59:34 +0000

There is so much glee in fat-shaming. It’s as if the more restrained bigots and scolds have been deprived of all the fun since the 1960s. So much of the grand traditions of American bigotry and scolding are based on things that people can’t change, and it is now considered bad form to admit to prejudices against people for things they can’t change (and, let’s be honest, most people think of religion as an inherited trait, and it usually is, though that exemption doesn’t hold up under even the tiniest of intellectual scrutiny). Even homosexuality has adopted the mantle (separately from whether it is true, which is a much more nuanced question) of immutability, so that someone like Saletan can’t maintain his self-image and go around saying, “those people who choose to do that are bad.”

What’s bigot to do? Who can be shamed based on easily identifiable characteristics and treated as a second-class citizen? Why, only one whose membership in the class is the product of choice. In the great Puritan tradition, one who has indulged in some pleasure of the flesh!

Of course, people visibly suffering from serious disease — lung cancer, AIDS and its opportunistic infections, debilitating substance addition — are too sympathetic for all but the worst misanthropes to feel good about picking on.

But fat people: they pass all the tests. They are visibly identifiable from a very long way off. And the very sight of them doesn’t produce sympathy. They’re not suffering for their presumed sins — why, they walk the streets, just like they did nothing wrong, with their fat selves, being fat, like there’s nothing wrong with it! Now there’s a class of folks to pick on! Sin without repentance! Excoriate away!

Of course, this view ignores lots of facts. But when did facts even interfere with a good stereotype where bigotry and scolding are concerned.

This makes me so mad I want to go give an overweight person an orgasm. In fact, hell, I’m going to go do just that.

By: ol'jb

ol'jb — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:25:14 +0000

I read that earlier. I thought it was interesting how skinny-normative his piece was, since it seemed to encourage the readership to abandon fat friends. Does Saletan think no one among the readership of online publications has a BMI over 26?