You mean like this?
Posted on 05/23/2008 7:17:18 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
Stigma can be a powerful force in changing behavior. Just ask smokers, whose once accepted habit is now so marginalized that the prevalence of smoking has dropped to about 19 percent of U.S. adults from nearly 24 percent just a decade ago. A lot of factors figured into the decline since smoking's mid-20th-century peak, but the sense that smoking is disgusting as well as unhealthful and socially costly has certainly contributed to many people's decision to quit.
Now that smokers have been taken care of, the obese are the new scapegoats for a lot of our ills. Last week, a letter published in the Lancet noted that the obese contribute more than their thinner compatriots to food scarcity and global warming, given that they eat more and require more transportation energy to move themselves around. While the authors' intent was probably not to make the obese feel worse, the media translations of the study in my quick Google search turned up headlines such as "Fat People Cause Global Warming, Higher Food Prices" and "Scientists Blame Fat People for Global Warming."
You might think that the obese could use some blame. As obesity increasingly becomes the norm, maybe society has grown too accepting. Perhaps what is lacking is the same thing that helped smokers lose their butts: a healthy dose of social stigma. If only there were more shame in being fat, maybe more people would be motivated to lose weight. But in fact, researchers say, stigma does very little to motivate overweight or obese people to change.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
You mean like this?
Ummmm, I was born - but not yesterday. Yes, the authors' intent was to make the obese feel worse. This same "author" probably would gush over the rights of pedophiles to live near schools.
Are we supposed to be celebrating obesity diversity and I didn't get the memo, or what?
The difference between smoking and obesity is that with smoking, the anti-smoking folks were successful in creating the notion that others would die from second-hand smoke, so the smoker was supposedly harming others, not just him or herself.
That argument can't be made with folks who are obese. And the idea that the obese should be shamed because they are going to put too much of a strain on the health care system might just blow up in the faces of those who want to make that argument. There are other lifestyle choices that do the same thing, so if the anti-obesity crowd were to try to attack the obese, the question could be asked why isn't anyone telling homosexual men that they shouldn't be engaging in sexual activity because it could kill them, and anyone with whom they have sexual relations? After all, their care puts a strain on the health care system, too, and whereas obese people can lose weight, people with AIDS don't get cured, they can only extend their lives a few years with medication. But since AIDS is the only disease that seems to have it's own civil rights, and obesity doesn't have that same protection, I don't think that subject will be broached.
The fat sweat, stink and overflow. Let them do it all out of my presence!
Why should my tax dollars go to pay for the lard ass who can't stay away from BK Whoppers and the KFC drive thru window. As a taxpayer, I am paying for his/her diabetic testing equipment and high blood pressure meds.
I won't stand for it. Then these stinky people have the nerve to stick their fleshy elbows in my ribs for 3 hours on an airline flight. I want action. Second hand obesity is not only annoying, it's a killer to my wallet.
That’s the truth — no true principles. Dishonesty.
I think they are trying to make the obese feel as though they are harming their fellow world citizens with their carbon footprint, excessively large to to their excessive size.
Of course smokers weigh less. Perhaps smokers will start getting some rights back, while the obese get to be targets for a while.
Personally I think we should ostracize homosexuals (bad for your health, spreading disease), jet setters (carbons polluting my air etc.) and organic farms (decreasing the overall food supply.) But that’s just me.
And the rights of butt humpers to have unprotected anal sex in bath houses.
Its way down.
Back when I was a kid in the late 60s & 70s everywhere you looked you saw people smoke.
Smoking was cool. I smoked.
Now, its nowhere near that common.
All it will do is guive the food facists and other apparatchiks the power to make people miserable. it will only raise the rate ouicide..
How about some good ol’-fashioned shunning of gun-grabbers?
That too Eric! And you play the part so well! It’s a psoition we have all been in and I can see some taking it that far.
Even Rosie O’donnell balked at that, exclaimning; “Did you ever see the size of my a*s?”
Only if they demand government action to "solve" the "problem." But obviously the mere expression of disapproval or disgust for something isn't a liberal attribute. Every last one of us does that all the time.
Man, reading all that whining made me hungry. I think I’ll get me a burger.
I, for one, would eat a double helping of creme brulee to honor OBAMA’s pronouncement.
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