One of Michelle Obama’s pet projects is fighting childhood obesity. I like Michelle Obama, but I don’t like how she and other ‘experts’ continually think they know the reasons for the problems of the poor. Michelle and Barak have never been ‘poor’ as per Government poverty standards. (how many poor American kids are born in Hawaii, do a little globe trotting from Africa to Asia and then end up at Columbia University?)
The President and his wife think Obesity among the poor is caused by food deserts. This is because they live in a world where they have easy access to personal chefs, high end gyms with sitters, high end foods and fat wallets. They don’t have to worry about choosing between a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk or how much they can stuff in their face on their thirty minute lunch break.
The First Couple can afford and have been able to afford to go to theaters with valet parking, caviar and champagne. The parties they attend aren’t potluck. They are places where they try out gold plated truffles (real truffles, mind you, not the chocolate kind). I don’t mind this. I don’t even envy this. They can afford their pleasures and it keeps them away from dollar store candy and theater floors thick with old soda. Lucky people!
What I do mind is them trying to take the pleasures that poor people can afford – those chocolate truffles I was talking about – because it makes us FAT.
We don’t get to go out every night and hang with Snoop Dogg or Beyonce. What we can do is watch washed-up singers like Marie Osmond on Dancing with the Stars while we eat our frozen pizza. We go to Dollar Tree and stash boxes of Nerds and Milk Duds in our purse or diaper bag because we can’t afford to pay theater snack bar prices after shelling out 7.50 a pop for the family at matinee. We use whipped cream on jello because it’s too expensive to waste on sex (because as evidenced by birth rates among the poor we have way more than the rich and we don’t even pay for it). Those are the pleasures POOR people can afford.
It wasn’t long ago that smoking was one of the pleasures of the poor. Will Smith can still afford his cigars. Most actors and even the President can have their little vice but that was also regulated and taxed out of the realm of the poor’s expense by do gooders trying to save us from ourselves (because even after all the surgeon generals warnings, the poor were still smoking!). And they are trying to do the same thing with Happy Meals. A mom and dad who have been working all day and don’t want to slave over a hot stove or deal with kids that have more energy than parents. Parents (even stay at home moms) are glad for the cheap fast food. The trendy toy is just the bonus that makes a parent a hero and allows them to say: you just got a toy at McDonalds the next time they have to lug a kid along. Besides, doesn’t the play place time more than make up for the extra calories?
Parents like you and I know we were never going to get the kids to eat that vegetable lasagna anyway. Why should they? They can just eat the pink slime burgers they get for free at school. It’s not like they will starve. And you know what? That’s kinda the problem…
All I am saying is that experts should just stop doing these ‘food desert’ studies. I know why poor people are fat: Because we can afford to be. We can’t pay for a gym membership, but we can buy a box of Twinkies. We can’t afford a really great therapist and non generic Zoloft… but we can afford Crunch and Munch. And as a generic substitute for anti depressants, Ding Dongs aren’t that bad! The side effects from chocolate covered sweet cakes very rarely include death.
We are fat and happy, like hobbits. And like hobbits we will probably have to save your ass and the entire world soon because your experts are great at talking and postulating but they’re absolute crap on execution and action. So just leave us be and pass the Oreos.
A Deaf In The Family 