(1) Fatheads. The permissivists among us would have society bear the burden of the morbidly obese, treating those fat, gluttonous beasts as 'victims' of a 'disease'. We are to pay them Social Security Disability benefits and pay higher medical insurance premiums to cover their fat asses. And woe be to an employer who wants to refuse to hire a fat-ass or fire someone who gets so fat that s/he can't perform the job's essential tasks, stinks up the workplace or wets down seats with excess perspiration, takes excessive amounts of time off — which forces other people to do their job, at no extra pay —, suffers excess rates of injury, and costs the employer, every member of the employer's workforce, and society more generally, by inflating medical costs to take care of self-inflicted injuries. This crap has got to stop. And maybe the courts are finally stopping it.
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An Associated Press article hilited on AOL today says:

Overweight workers cost their bosses more in injury claims than their lean colleagues, suggests a study that found the heaviest employees had twice the rate of workers' compensation claims as their fit co-workers.

Researchers found that the heaviest workers had 13 times more lost workdays due to work-related injuries, and medical claims for such injuries that were seven times higher than those of lean co-workers.

Obesity experts said they hope the study will convince employers to invest in programs to help fight obesity. One employment attorney warned companies that treating fat workers differently could lead to discrimination complaints.

The courts might not find in favor of fat-asses, but the costs of frivolous lawsuits could be onerous. Who pays the costs of such litigiousness? Just the particular employer? How does that employer recoup the expense? Higher prices to customers? Lower wages for employees? Lower tax payments to governments? Cutting costs by exporting jobs to places where workers (a) make almost nothing and (b) have neither the right nor the power to level outrageous lawsuits?
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There are two obvious remedies to such frivolous litigation. One is for the courts to award attorney's fees to employers wrongfully sued by fat slobs. The other is for legislatures (Congress and state lawmakers) to state plainly that obesity is not a disability, so there is no legal basis for a lawsuit on that ground. Current law is unclear.
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Last September, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found against one slob:

The EEOC had brought suit on behalf of a worker who claimed he had been fired because of his morbid obesity (he weighed up to 450 pounds). The Sixth Circuit held that the worker did not have a "disability" for purposes of the ADA, because he did not show that his obesity had a "physiological cause" and therefore qualified as a "physiological disorder." Although the EEOC had shown that the worker's weight was more than 100% greater than the norm (sufficient for a diagnosis of morbid obesity under the traditional definition), they failed to show that the weight was "the result of a physiological condition."

The commentator at the Disability Law Blog quoted above criticized that decision by saying that:

All of our behavior has some physiological cause, if only from hormones and brain activity.

What a jerk. So we have the right to stuff our mouths with food 18 hours a day and blow up to hundreds of pounds over a safe weight, and claim that that aberrant behavior is physiologically based, and thus society has to pay? I don't think so.
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My best friend for over a decade was "morbidly obese". The word "morbid" is part of that term for good reason. He had adult-onset diabetes, which happens when someone eats more than his body can provide for; and heart problems; and problems catching his breath on stairs. He refused to change his eating habits, on the rationale "I'm going to be dead a lot longer than I am alive." And he is dead now. He died shortly before his 49th birthday. I miss him, and will never stop being mad at him. So don't ask indulgence of the morbidly obese. You "enable" their self-destructive behavior.
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Another friend lost 200 pounds in the past year or so. He was over 400 pounds and waddled, his arms flinging back and forth in an arc as he walked. He finally got tired of that, stopped eating so much, hired a trainer, and did the hard work of losing a huge amount of weight. He unfortunately still has some 15 pounds of loose skin that needs to be surgically removed because it might never be reabsorbed. But then he's going to go to the beach for the first time in years. He lives in New Jersey, which has one of the world's great Shores, but he did not want to be seen in a bathing suit for years.
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I have another friend who lost a lot of weight due to life-threatening illness, not exercise, and felt better when he was able to gain back that weight, and perhaps a bit more. Because not being fat meant to him not "slender" (healthy) but "thin" (sick). I hope he can get over that and trim down to a healthier weight.
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But gluttons who eat vastly more than they are entitled to, in a world of starvation, should be stopped. The very least that should be done is that the weight of social condemnation lands hard on them and they are cut off from all outside support in their self-destructive, sinful gluttony. Fotos of starving children in the Third World should be placed on the door to their refrigerator, pantry, and kitchen cabinets, and some or all of the money they used to spend on food that was killing them should instead be sent to feed Third World children.
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Society should very seriously consider outlawing morbid obesity, as a crime against society, arrest people fatter than a seriously dangerous weight (sliding scale for weight and health, but well beyond normal levels of human variation), confine them in jail cells, and put them on a strict but well-balanced diet and compel them to do appropriate exercise to force the weight off. They should be given dietary guidance and psychological counseling to get at the root of why they have to shove food into their mouth long beyond the point where they could remotely need it. Only after their weight has stabilized at a starkly lower level should they be released.
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If they blow up again, they should be jailed and simply starved. Forget about well-balanced diet. Just starve the bastards. Give them vitamin pills and dietary supplements with water, period, but no calories whatsoever. And make them fear that a third offense will result in their expulsion from society to a foodless wasteland where they will be left to starve to death. After all, millions of people, mostly children, die of starvation on this planet every year. Most of them never had the pleasure of a full stomach even once in their brief lives. I'll save my sympathy for them.
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No way in hell should fat people be given Social Security Disability or welfare payments to empower them to sit around on their fat ass, getting closer and closer to death at public expense. If we're going to kill them, let's just do it with a gunshot to the head or by exiling them from human society on some arctic island. They're out of their minds. Let them be out of sight, too. We don't need to be disgusted by mountains of fat.
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(2) Alec Baldwin Is Right! I finally listened to the 'infamous' telephone message left by actor Alec Baldwin for his 11-year-old dauter in which he berates her for repeatedly refusing to take his pre-scheduled calls. The indignation of some people in media about his frank talk is outrageous. When did this country go nuts? Fathers have rights, among which is the right to tell a selfish little bitch that she is behaving outrageously and it's got to stop. The female judge who suspended his visitation rights should be removed from the bench. Parents have an absolute right to tell a spoiled child that s/he is spoiled and try to snap him or her out of wrongful behavior. Indeed, that's a large part of the job of parents: to teach kids the difference between right and wrong, and what their obligations are to other people.
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(3) Stop "the Wave" on Headline News! In recent weeks, CNN Headline News — which is headlines only (a shrinking) part of the day now, so should be required to change its name to CNN2 or some such — has been hiliting live footage with an extremely distracting and annoying "wave" of the letters in words like "HAPPENING NOW". It works like the "audience wave" in sports stadiums in which the crowd stands and sits in sequence across the stands to give the impression of a wave rushing across the stands. Do we really have to be hit in the face over and over again by animated lettering to tell us that what is on view now is live? Doesn't the RED BAND behind the lettering and the words "HAPPENING NOW" or "LIVE" say all we need to know? What kind of inconsiderate fools have taken over CNN? Do they think that irritating people builds audience?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,333 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:03 PM