Letters exchange regarding Michael Fumento's article, "Fat Chance"
Michael Fumento needs to stick to his war reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. He is
becoming, like some other conservatives that should know better, a nag. Millions of
Americans have obviously decided that the elite and the nags cost them their
cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, but they are not going to do the same thing with
their food. Oh, and heaven help you if you should sample an adult beverage or two.
Nag, nag, nag!
I have noticed that thin people are ever so quick to take offense, to take umbrage,
to find things to complain about, and to generally walk around with a chip on their
shoulders constantly. I have pretty much decided that it is because they are hungry
all the time. Laura Ingraham becomes a complete shrew when the subject turns to
people that are not as thin as she thinks the population ought to be. I think she
should put on 20 lbs to look healthy.
Now, I am not defending folks that are morbidly obese and who stuff their faces with
high fat junk food at the drop of a hat. I do, however, insist that there are some
relatively smaller number of folks that have physical problems that cause them to
put on the pounds. Those who take several of the medications for diabetes find that
said medications cause weight gain, the very thing that a diabetic is constantly
fighting. My own workout schedule should have slimmed me down to a more societally
acceptable size a long time ago. My diabetes medication, however, makes shedding the
pounds almost impossible, and unfortunately, my genetic history for many generations
is heavily populated with diabetics. I call it my family disease.
While folks like Michael Fumento and Laura Ingraham are reciting their statistics
and studies in support of thinness, I keep thinking of the pictures of the
wonderfully thin folks that were liberated from the German concentration camps, and
who managed to survive the death marches and internment by the Japanese. I think of
the movement afoot to save our modern society's young girls by banning or
restricting the "zero" sized fashion models.
Speaking of fashion, isn't it odd that it is no longer fashionable to make note of
the folks that are anorexic or bulimic? It is no longer fashionable in the
entertainment world to look anything but severely undernourished. My heavens, but
Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, and many more would be considered
overweight today.
I would rather that I and most in society would die at 75 to 85 and have enjoyed a
relatively happy life, then to see folks live until 100 as dried up, unpleasant,
prunes that are a complete chore to have to be around. My medical/genetic condition
may have caused me to significantly alter my diet, but I still remember what comfort
food is and what it tastes like, and I still remember how to be pleasant around
folks and not be a nag, unless of course you are a liberal, in which case I don't
need to be around you anyway. I would suggest that the health/weight nags among us
spend a little more time looking in the mirror and correcting what they see there,
and leave me to try correcting what is not optimum in my own life.
No one likes a nag, and there are a whole bunch of once married but now single
elderly men and women that can attest to that idiom.
– Ken Shreve
P.S. My dogs don't mind my weight, and I trust their judgment about people.
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Mary Fumento with a BMI of 19 –
always snarling, always hungry.
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Michael Fumento replies:
It's rather bizarre to hear a comparison between those with a BMI of less than 25
and concentration camp victims. The freed inmates you see in the newsreels probably
have a BMI of less than 17. (My wife's BMI is 19 and she objectively looks
terrific.) Fat acceptance people are always trying to set up a false dichotomy
between being too fat and being too thin, as if there's no happy medium. That's why
fat acceptance groups harp so much on anorexia. As for non-overweight people "being
hungry all the time," that too is bizarre. Before the obesity epidemic began in the
early 1970s, Americans didn't walk around with constantly rumbling stomachs.
"I have noticed" doesn't exactly sound like good science. Clearly, in what's been
called a "toxic environment," with drug stores essentially being food stores, and
virtually any business of any kind selling food, something distinguishes thin people
from fat people other than sheer weight. But I think the main feature isn't
crankiness but rather determination. It was what Shakespeare observed long ago when
in his eponymous play Julius Caesar declares: "Let me have men about me that are
fat, sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights: Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry
look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous."
Conversely, we know the "jolly fat person" stereotype is a myth. Mortality aside,
excess fat disposes one to a host of painful illnesses including osteoarthritis of
the knees, ankles, and hips; gallbladder problems; a variety of foot problems; lower
back pain; and type 2 diabetes. (Also chaffing thighs.) I can't imagine several
insulin self-injections a day is fun. I should think these, along with the
additional medical bills, would lend themselves to crankiness.
Finally, "nagging" has been part of society since there was society. Obviously it
needs to be at proper level, but societal opprobrium as well as religion long served
to keep genetic urges wired in check. (Consider both the Ten Commandments and the
Seven Deadly Sins, the latter of which includes both sloth and gluttony.) It has
been the liberals' effort to remove such opprobrium ("Don't be judgmental," "If it
feels good, do it!") that has launched a plague of evils such as high divorce rates,
high unwed pregnancy rates, and, I would venture, the incredible national girth
growth. There did used to be a certain amount of pressure to be thin; Mr. Shreve
seems to be applying pressure for us to be fat. I am not a hedonist and have no
trouble with calls for restraining urges that harm both the individual and society.
Overweight and obesity fit the bill quite nicely.
My cats give me a small bite when they think I've packed on an extra pound or two.
Michael Fumento
Read the orginal article, "Fat Chance."
Read Michael Fumento's additional work on obesity.
Michael Fumento is the author of numerous books, including The Fat of the Land.
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