The Fat's in the Fire

Who ever thought of Mississippi as being in the vanguard of liberal thinking and the poster state for the, uh, nanny state? But now here it is making up for all that lost time. Three Mississippi legislators are proposing that it be illegal for licensed restaurants (are there other kinds?) to serve food to obese people. Patrons at or above a specified body mass index would be refused service. First cities started banning trans-fats. Now they're moving on to banning the fat.

Believing, I suppose, that food-aholics are indeed like alcoholics, this would be like cutting off a drunk who had consumed too much. A great idea. Humane, kind and thoughtful. It would create healthier and more attractive people—which is ultimately the job of government. I guess being fat in a public place would also be a crime. Maybe a the aesthetic fat police could just issue tickets for first offenders.

I wonder, would going into a restaurant and buying a hungry obese person a cheeseburger be a crime? If so, what? Pandering? Contributing to the illness and death of another? Could a person, sorry, I mean, such an enabler be guilty of negligent homicide or manslaughter were the eater to die? There are already cases where child custody has been lost because the child was too heavy by the standards of the state. Boy for a left-leaning liberal, I’m starting to sound pretty right. Right?

Let’s face it, as usual California is way ahead of Mississippi. Our very own council member, Jan Perry, proposed a fast food moratorium in South Central to protect the people from themselves. We are doing such a good job of protecting people from gangs, poverty, exploitation; we are succeeding so well at educating our kids to read, write and calculate; we are instilling in all our population so much respect for each other, the environment and our civil society that government is finally free to be the ultimate arbiter elagantum and make our menu selections, pick our optimal weights and get us to get the BMI of their dreams.

The problem with this thinking, this nonsensical paradigm, is that while an alcoholic can survive without booze, people can’t survive without food. Oh, whoops, why didn’t they think of that?