Imagine going out to dinner with your friends. But being told you couldn't even sit at the table with them and order a cup of tea or the restaurant could lose its license. That scenario would be reality if Mississippi House Bill 282 had passed. It would have probibited restaurants from serving obese patrons. Is this the work of a food cop gone over the top? Or could there be other hidden agendas at work?
Mary could not believe she has such a huge spot on her new blouse. As she went into the cafeteria, she self-consciously held her hand over it, hoping no one would notice. The man at the next table did seem to notice however; in fact, he was starring at the spot intently. "Shame you have got a stain on that nice new blouse there young lady."
Mary blushed. "I was hoping no one would notice."
"It is a pretty big spot, I saw it right off." said the man. " If I were you I would go try and wash it out."
It wasn't until Mary went to pay her bill that she realized her purse was missing. In her embarrassment over her appearance, she completely forgot to keep track of her possessions. The man must have walked off with it. Normally, Mary is much more careful around strangers. But her emotional vulnerability was her undoing this time.
Now what does this little story have to do with a bill introduced in January by W.T. Mayhall Jr. that would prohibit restaurants from serving anyone who is considered obese in the state of Mississippi? And I am NOT just talking extreme obesity, I am talking about obesity as defined by our government (read Pharma) to help sell more diet pills. Under this draconian law, anyone with a BMI of over 30 would be out of luck. Want to take your daughter out to dinner for her birthday? Too bad, even if you wanted to order a salad sans dressing just to join in the occassion. Under House Bill 282, if the restaurant served you, it could lose its license.
Of course this bill is ridiculous and Mayhall himself did not even vote for it. He said he introduced it to create a dialogue to talk about the strain obesity was putting on the medicaid system. O.k. Mayhall, lets talk. I don't want to talk about the fact that it is not medicaid patients who frequent restaurants the most. And I DON'T want to talk about the fact the fat people as a group eat no more than thin people as a group. Because if you don't know that by now, you are beyond hope. Stop getting your science information from tabloids and talk shows. Or diet companies! Or their mouthpieces aka MSM (mainstream media!)
I'll tell you want I want to talk about bubba. I mean Mayhall. After we chew the fat I want to digest your real motives. I want to talk about the old sand in your eyes trick. You know, temporarily distracting people so they won't know what you yourself are up to. I want to talk about how at the very same time you were throwing the sand/stigma of obesity in our faces, your former company, DuPont-Merk was settling with the government for defrauding MEDICAID. (1) That is right, the very same program you were so worried about. And why did MSM not pick up on this? It was only too happy to point out the error of the ways of poor folk noshing on too many twinkies, while the real fat cats in the corporate world were ripping off the government left and right. Could this possible be because so much of MSM is owned by corporations and when you get down to it, it is one small group of uber rich at the top against the rest of us? And MSM is one of their biggest tools of manipulation?
Now most of us already know this. Most of us already have a healthy distrust of both corporate America and MSM. But when it comes to obesity our B.S. detectors are more dormant than our tastebuds after a week on Jenny Craig's prepackaged meal plan. This is hardly an isolated incident. Obesity has been used over and over as a scapegoat. How many times have we heard that it is the fat of the land that is responsible for the rising cost of health care? Now ask yourself how much you know about Bill Frist. Who is Frist you ask?He is a former Senate Majority Leader. His family owns HCA Inc.-Hospital Corporation of America. They are the largest for profit hospital chain in the U.S. and they too were accused of defrauding Medicaid, Medicare, and Tricare. (2) And the Frists were far from the only ones with their fingers in the pie, (my bad for mixing metaphors) milking U.S. dry. Yet, corporate crime never gets as much attention as our neighbor's love handles. Incredibly, there have also been headlines blaming obesity for the failing economy. Who in their right mind would let middrift bulge eclipse the significance of jobs hemorhaging overseas, the reckless ruining the financial system with Ponzi schemes and running up trillions of dollars in debt??? MSM has made sure fat is more infamous than fraud.
What is wrong with us that we keep falling for it over and over??? The answer is that like Mary in the above scenario, we too are emotionally vulnerable. It is not weight itself, but weight obsession that is our achilles heel. The very word fat conjures up fear, it can literally cause weakness in our knees. The site of a fat person splashed on a t.v. screen causes instant contrition for our own culinary indiscretions. What we have forgotten is that guilt is a tool of the manipulator; it is a ring in the noses of our psyches that allows our handlers to lead us in any direction they like. This is hardly new. For centuries, religious leaders have been using guilt, chiefly over sex, to control their congregations. Perhaps that is why so many of them got away with molesting our children for so long. When we are blinded by our own guilt, we have less vision to see others clearly.
I am going to save how absurd it is to make weight our top priority when we are facing so many real social crisis for another time. My point here is to expose the con. I have long learned that anyone who needs to make a big deal of my "flaws" usually has a hidden agenda. Perhaps they want to manipulate me into buying something. Perhaps they want to deflect attention away from their own inadequacies. Perhaps they just so lack self-esteem they want to bring others down to their level. It doesn't matter. It is a huge warning sign exploitation is afoot. The more they point in my direction, the more I look back in theirs to see what they want to distract me from. We should be just as cautious every time MSM sounds the code red obesity sirens. Sure it is in the power-elite's best interest that we look no further than our scales! That way we won't see what they are really up to until it is too late!
1 - To find out more about the DuPont-Merk accusation visit http://www.prwatch.org/...
2 - To find out more about the activities of the Frist family and HCA Inc visit http://www.laweekly.com/...