Tranny-state, Misfits, Subsidizing Lardasses, Militarist's Spelling Surrender (four topics).

(1) Trans-Fatheads. The New York City Council recently passed an ordinance outlawing the use of artificial trans-fats in city restaurants. How dare they? And can they get away with it?
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Local restaurateurs have threatened legal action to void that ordinance, on the ground that it is not for a municipality to outlaw a substance that the Federal Government’s Food and Drug Administration has found fit to permit. I hope they do sue, and demand punitive damages against the individual councilmembers who seek to impose their own, personal attitudes upon 8 million New Yorkers and millions upon millions of commuters and tourists. It really is not for a bunch of nonscientist, hack politicians to make dietary choices for millions of people in what is supposed to be a “free” society.
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There isn’t much I agree with Rightwingers about, but fiting the “Nanny State” — Government treating everyone like retarded children who can't make decisions for themselves even about the most personal of matters — is one. Government should do pretty much ONLY what individuals cannot do for themselves. With every power to ‘help’ comes the power to harm, and politics tends to attract control freaks who think they know better than other people how those other people should live.
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It is not for Government to tell us what foods to eat. What next? An official, and compulsory, Government menu-planner? banishing from supermarkets and convenience stores all foods Government doesn't like? Where does it end?
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People in government should mind their own business when it comes to what people eat, as long as it’s not indisputably and imminently deadly, such as poison. Speculating about what might or might not happen 20 or 30 years from now if people continue to eat disapproved foods is unscientific balderdash and must never be the basis for Government intrusion upon personal autonomy.
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Meanwhile, the one substance that kills more New Yorkers than any other gets a free ride. If the city council wants to protect New Yorkers’ and visitors’ health, let it enact a total ban on tobacco: no growth, importation, or sale of tobacco or any tobacco product, period. That would be worth doing.
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Could they get away with that? Why not? There are many hundreds of “dry” counties in this country, in which the sale of alcohol is either completely banned or partially restricted. Why couldn't that model be applied to tobacco, which is far more dangerous than alcohol? Tobacco kills 440,000 people a year in the United States alone — 154 times as many as died on 9/11, every year, year after year, not in a surprise, one-time sneak attack but in an ongoing, well-understood and eminently preventable disaster — and 1.4 million worldwide. There is no safe level of use for tobacco. Moderation does not equate with safety. New York, which is in a very real sense the capital of the world, for being the headquarters city of the United Nations, has an opportunity to lead the way for the entire planet in destroying this ravager of humanity.
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Smoking is not a personal choice that people have the right to make as a matter of personal autonomy. It would be such a choice if smokers consumed every microgram of smoke and did not release any of it into the environment other people have to breathe. But they don't. There is thus absolutely no valid comparison between smoking on the one hand and eating, drinking, or any other activity that Government overreaches in controlling as part of its "Nanny State" ambitions, on the other hand.
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The real issue is not whether the New York City Council, or any other government, has the right utterly to ban tobacco, but whether it has the guts.
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Municipalities and states should move forward, from the timid restrictions upon tobacco in enclosed public spaces, to a total ban on every form of tobacco that could conceivably cause harm, be it to users or, especially, to nonusers who are exposed against their will.
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That would be a reasonable and responsible use of governmental power. Banning artificial trans-fats (small quantities of trans-fats are found in natural sources) is no such use.
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(2) Misfits. When did people in this country lose track of what size clothing they wear? I noticed a couple of years ago that sleeves on TV shows tend to be much too long, partially covering the hands of actors. I passed that off as careless wardrobe people or pennypinching production companies trying to use the same garments for different actors in different shows on the plainly false notion that one size fits all.
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But recently I have noticed, in having nothing more pressing to do than observe my surroundings while riding subways, that lots and lots of people in this country are wearing clothes that don’t fit. Pants are 2, 3, even 5 inches too long, and bunch around the shoes, especially running shoes, which require shorter pants than usual by at least an inch, because the shoe tops ride high. The backs of tens of millions of pant legs are now being frayed away by being stepped on by the wearers, and people are in danger of tripping on their own pants. For what?
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Many people’s sleeves are also too long. Jackets are too big, with sleeves that cover part of the hand; horizontally, jackets bulk around the waist and chest much more than could ever be needed to accommodate a sweater, shirt, and teeshirt beneath.
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Why?
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Is it that particularized sizes have for the most part, in the cheap imported clothing that dominates store offerings, been replaced by category sizes — S(mall), M(edium), L(arge), XL (Extra Large), XXL (Extra Extra Large), etc.?
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Is it some bizarre style fad nowadays to be dwarfed by your clothes?
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Do adults imagine they will grow into over-large clothes? They might grow around the waist, but they’re not going to grow longer legs or arms.
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Do people want to be bigger, so buy clothing that suggests they are bigger than they are? Is it some bizarre proof of manhood to wear 34 length pants when you’re really a 31? Oh, you might not be able to find a 31, because only even-number sizes are offered in many stores. But you could choose a 32 or, if you plan to wear them with athletic shoes, 30. Why on Earth choose a 34? If they don’t have a 32 right now, wait a couple of days or go to another store. It cannot be that everyone with grotesquely overlong pants was unable to find his or her correct size. There has to be some kind of willful choice involved here.
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I sure don’t understand it.
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There’s another type of clothing misfitting going on in this country too: clothing that is too lite for the weather. A few decades ago, you could understand someone's being caught going home at 2am wearing only shirtsleeves when the weather is in the low 30s or upper 20s. When they left the house, it was warm, and they assumed it would stay warm, despite the calendar. But we have pretty good weather forecasts now, and have had for years. Yet I see young people aplenty wearing much lyter clothing than is healthy in December. It’s mostly young men. Is there some kind of nouveau machismo (yes, I know that’s a linguistic mismatch) that demands that guys pretend the cold doesn’t bother them?
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If these people end up in the hospital for their stupidity, or have to call in sick for work, who is going to pay those costs and make up the work they’re not doing?
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Parents, if you see your kids leaving the house with insufficient protection from the weather at the coldest point they can be expected to be out, stop them and insist they dress appropriately. The cold does bother them, and cold-induced illness entails costs to others. Let them prove their manhood/adulthood in constructive and sensible endeavors, not risking their life wearing shorts or dispensing with jackets in wintry weather.
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(3) Paying for Pigs. A side issue arises for me as to large sizes. Fat people are costing normal-size people money, and it’s got to stop. Large-size clothes are sold at the same price as Medium or Small. Even XL usually sells for the same price, tho plainly the increased fabric in the largest sizes costs the manufacturer more. Who makes up the difference? Smaller people — normal-size people. That’s not fair. Let fat people pay their own way — or should I say “weight”? Heavy trucks pay higher rates than lite in certain settings (highway use licenses, ferries). Fat people should pay a higher rate for the excess bulk of their clothing, and not push off their extra fabric cost onto people who don’t have a love affair with food and idleness.
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(4) General “Schoomaker”. It turns out that the present spelling of the last name of the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff has no N: SchooMaker. I suspect that that is an alteration from the Dutch name I bear, SchooNMaker. One entire branch of my family got tired of having to spell the name over and over, so actually accepted the ignorance of Dutch among their neighbors and changed the name to “Shoemaker”. I imagine, but do not know, that the General’s spelling is a similar surrender to ignorance. Inasmuch as I am anti-militarist, I’m just as happy not to share a name with the Army Chief of Staff. I prefer, if any association be made with another person in the public mind, that I am seen to share the same name as the most popular wine expert in this country in the 20th Century, Frank Schoonmaker.
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If the U.S. Army's Chief of Staff chooses to renounce the Schoonmaker past, that's fine with me. Who knows? Maybe we really aren't both descended from Hendrick Jochemsz Schoonmaker, 1624-1683, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, but came to what was then New Amsterdam in 1653 and moved farther up the Hudson in New Netherland, long before the British turned the whole area into New York State. But I suspect we are.
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(This is an entry drafted on and for Friday, but uploaded Saturday due to time constraints.)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,940 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:58 PM