GOP, Sun-Sentinel Dish Out Criticism of Anti-Obesity Campaign
BY SAM FIELDS AND KARI FIELDS Guest Columnists
If you wanted to find out how stupid and hypocritical Republicans can get read a Sun-Sentinel column this week by GOP consultant Steve Kurlander.
He denounces Michelle Obama in the newspaper and on his website for trying to get our kids to eat healthier school lunches.
Kurlander and the Sun-Sentinel are very late to this unhealthy game.
Sarah Palin said months ago about Ms. Obama: “She’s is on this kick, right. What she is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat. … Just leave us alone, get off our back.â€
GOP commentators have been hyperventilating about Ms. Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. This includes Rush Limbaugh, the rotund radio host.
Kurlander weighed in this week. Like the rest who desperately grasp at any opportunity to attack the Democratic couple in the White House, he sees school lunches as solely a “parental rights†issue and none of the government’s business.
Hey, Steve! It is the government’s business! Washington spends $12 billion a year on The National School Lunch Program.
Nobody is trying to stop parents from packing a Twinkie and a baloney sandwich on Wonder Bread for their kids’ lunches. It’s just that Ms. Obama wants the government to stop paying for this dietary hari-kari.
With obesity and its scions diabetes and heart disease skyrocketing, somebody has to encourage healthy eating.
It is not an exaggeration that our fat/obesity epidemic will cost us trillions–yes, that’s trillions–in healthcare and lost productivity. Much of that will mean more taxes for Medicare and Medicaid.
You like taxes Steve???
Kurlander believes that he has a better solution than Ms. Obama. He wants us to simply to educate our students on how to eat healthier.
How would this possibly have any effect on kids when everyday they go to the cafeteria to be served complete crap? This would be equivalent to concluding the anti-drug D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) club meetings by passing out crack.
Hey Steve, Wake up and smell the “double cream vente frappuccino.â€
Better yet, put down your Lipitor and look in the mirror. If the rest of your body is a reflection of head shots on your website and in the paper it looks like Mom and Pop Kurlander didn’t do such a good job with you. You’ve got more chins than a Chinese phonebook.
Steve Kurlander (right) with U. S. Sen. John McCain
But that’s what happens when you can’t resist that 22nd latka with sour cream that you promote on your website.
Beginning with high fructose corn syrup–which chemically suppresses the brain mechanism that tells you have had too much to eat–agri-business has been addicting us to crap foods.
High fructose corn syrup is pot…without the good kind of high. “Hey someone needs to go over to 7-ll and get more Ben and Jerry’s.â€
Do you watch Nathan’s hotdog eating contest every July 4th? It’s the Super Bowl of our new sport of competitive eating. What next, Roman vomitoriums?
For two hundred years we have regularly extended American life expectancy. If we continue on this path we will see our first reversal.
I urge readers to check out a food documentary called “Forks Over Knives.†If it’s not still in theatres, check out Netflix. In 90 minutes you will learn more about food and health than you can imagine.
While you are at it, check out “Supersize Meâ€. It is billed as a documentary about what happens to a perfectly healthy guy who eats McDonalds for only thirty days.
But it really is a horror movie. It has a really scary lesson.
If you eat junk food like McDonalds for a month, you end up looking like Rush Limbaugh. Or Kurlander. Just another Republican Fat Cat. And I do mean Fat.
(Kari Fields, 24, is a senior at Florida Atlantic University. She is Sam Fields’ daughter.)
June 3rd, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Being a fat women, with two kids that are thin, I applaud Ms. Obama’s quest to make school lunches healthier. However, in the quest to make things healthier lets teach the lunch ladies how to make tasty healthy foods. It is possible and if the kids like the lunches, isn’t that half the battle?
Enough with the cheap shots at fat people you disagree with. You don’t know why people are heavy since there are a variety of medical reasons that cause serious weigh gain.
June 3rd, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Sam and Kari wrote:
“You’ve got more chins than a Chinese phonebook.”
Using an Asian slur to slam Kurlander about his and the GOP’s stance on Michele Obama’s Anti-Obesity campaign just isn’t right.
You both are better than that!!!
June 3rd, 2011 at 2:07 pm
If Michele Obama announced that she had come up with a cure for cancer, the Republicans would claim she was ruining the economy by putting medical personnel out of a job.
June 3rd, 2011 at 3:38 pm
so funny so true
June 3rd, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Dear Creek
Why is that an Asian slur? It’s a pun without any negative aisan implications. Although now that you mention it Forks and Knives does a very interesting section about the growth of obesity and heart disease in China since they have begun to adopt Western food habits.
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:15 pm
It is an insult, Fields.
It assumes that many Chinese are named Chin and that there would be many of them in a Chinese phone book.
It is as insulting as saying,”Are their lots of Goldberg’s in the Tel Aviv phone book?” in place of the common rhetorical question, “Does A Bear Shit In The Woods?”
The appeal to ethnic humor is insulting to some of the community in itself. It is a laugh at the expense of others, something you specialize in. It is saying we should look at all those Chinese people who are named Chin. Ha ha ha.
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Dear Creek,
I happen to know that my dad has a friend who knows a guy who dated a girl who’s brother is Asian. I think that gives him enough right to poke fun. 😉
June 3rd, 2011 at 9:54 pm
Oooops, the header to this diatribe was filed under “General News”, while it should read “Opinion” or maybe “Hate Speech” or maybe just plain “Bull Shit”.
Sam, some people carry their fat in their stomach. You carry all yours between your ears.
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
While I often find myself disagreeing with some factual or philosophical point or another in a Sam Fields guest essay, I’m surprised that someone who fancies himself as a well-informed person would still be so poorly informed and be laboring under the impression that Rush Limbaugh was STILL at his former unhealthy weight.
Especially given all the publicity two years ago following his announcement that he’d lost 90-something pounds due to a product that has been a sponsor of his ever since -though I can’t say whether that is a chicken-and-egg thing.
The estimates that I’ve heard/read is that Limbaugh’s weight is around 210-220 lbs., hardly gargantuan.
Just saying…
FROM BUDDY:
Limbaugh did lose weight through portion control. However, he brags about continuing to eat steak dipped in butter and smoking cigars. Since being on the diet, he was hospitalized in Hawaii for a heart scare.
No, Limbaugh is not at his former unhealthy weight. However, he remains wedded to an unhealthy diet, in smaller portions.
What Sam and Kari are saying is this:
Limbaugh is paying for his own food and can make whatever choices he wants. The government pays for school lunches, so the government should have a say on what they kids eat. It is not the same, although the Republicans are trying to say it is.
June 4th, 2011 at 7:02 am
I don’t have kids in school. I do see big fat slobs buying Cheetos and bags of candy with food stamps. That should be prohibited.
June 5th, 2011 at 8:25 am
The last time I saw Fields he was overweight. Too many Latkas, Sam?
June 7th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
How did either of you get a position as a columnist? Go back to school and take Persuasive Writing 101. Learn how to make rational arguments without launching nasty personal attacks on those you disagree with. Making fun of people for being fat– shame on you. You set a terrible example for school children.
June 7th, 2011 at 4:16 pm
By far the most unprofessional thing I’ve read. Who cares if you agree with Kurlander or not. But to pull up photos of him, post one and then poke fun at his weight? What happened? Were you bullied in school and now fighting back from a computer?
Read what he wrote. He thinks Obama’s mission is admirable, just taking it too far with cameras and scanners. The world is outpacing us in education and we are going to focus on kids eating habits?
Many kids wouldn’t be obese if their parents would drag them away from the Xbox and play a game of catch with them.
You owe Kurlander an apology. Period.
June 7th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
To slander another, journalistically,because you think Washington is in control(12 billion goes to ‘private contracts’…i am sure no politics involved there, huh?), is to show you will not be a ‘guest journalist’ for long.
The ‘Obama way’ is not a wave of the future. it was a Democratic strategy of using ‘race’ to redefine Washington. It has failed.
Arrogance and pettiness was your cheap shot at Mr. Kurlander. It failed.
June 8th, 2011 at 9:52 am
Mr. Kurlander is an obese, if not a morbidly obese man who is lecturing us on school diets. I’m sorry but it needs to be pointed out how absurd this is.
If he manages to make it to 65 he may one day ask Medicare—paid for by me and you–to blow serious $$$ for his bariatric surgery.
Let me add that very little of the obesity epidemic we are experiencing is glandular. It is behavioral and encouraged by agri-business.
Our obesity epidemic is as much a threat to our national well-being as any other disease and in the case of heart disease and many cancers the cause.
June 8th, 2011 at 10:04 am
I read this article and wow, should you be ashamed of yourself. It’s one thing to disagree with someone; it’s entirely different when you decide to eviscerate them. You write a half-truth sloppy “article” with hatred and belligerence and then expect what? Did you expect to change anything? Were you hoping to get the same “shots†in from the Democratic side that you claim are coming from the Republicans? Shame on you!
But let’s talk FACTS.
Facts are that the Federal Government shouldn’t be involved in our school system. It’s a state, county and city issue but the local and state politicians are so ready to take that “free†money from the Federal Government that they’ve forgotten how many of our state rights they’ve pissed away, education being just one of them. School lunches, while not your vegan paradise, are certainly not grossly unhealthy but that’s the rap they’re getting. To hear it from you, we’d think the lunch lines were just loaded with Twinkies and ice cream. You’d have us believe kids are served items so unhealthy that we, as parents, wouldn’t serve anything like it at home. Which does beg the question, what IS being served at home and will you regulate that too. Yes, I know there ARE exceptions but as a parent, don’t you know WHAT your child is eating? Don’t you know what they’re CHOOSING in line? If your premise was sound and we all wanted this, why weren’t parents protesting at the schools? Where are all the parents sending lunches instead of giving them money for lunch? Where is the outcry? There isn’t any because like most of the government bureaucrats, you’ve missed the point. For too long parents have let their KIDS choose what they want to eat and Kids aren’t fat just because of WHAT they eat but HOW MUCH they eat and how long they EXERCISE! This generation of kids is more apt to sit in front of a TV playing Xbox, or sit in their room texting their BFF, than to get outside and go over and play with their friends!
Since you brought up McDonalds, I thought I’d respond. You would love to slap taxes and fines on McDonalds, force them have a healthier menu, but there’s just one problem with that. IT’S NOT YOUR BUSINESS. It’s not your, or the government’s, place to tell a restaurant what to serve on their menu. It’s MY job as a PARENT to decide if I want my kid eating somewhere, particularly fast food. Don’t give me the BS of “it’s too hard to say no to my kids all the timeâ€. It’s simple really… say it with me… “NO.†I should also mention that McDonalds was the #1 job creator in this economy…
How about that high-fructose corn syrup! I hate the stuff and we, as a family, refuse to buy ANYTHING with it. But that’s our CHOICE, not the governments’. I don’t buy the argument of “it will cost us more in health care down along the line†either. This is the United States of America, where it used to be synonymous with “freedomâ€, not “freedom that the government feels is appropriate for youâ€. You may not like my choice, but it is, after all, mine and people like me (consumers) are demanding that companies stop using HFCS or we won’t buy their product. That’s the most powerful “tax†in the world! Imagine that, consumers telling companies what they will and will not buy… it’s a world gone mad I tell you.
Finally I couldn’t end this comment with anything other than a note that you should look in the mirror. That’s the person that, instead of putting together a good argument to paper, decided to personally and publicly attack the man instead of the message. I got your message all right. You’re a bitter, angry self-loathing progressive that believes people are too stupid to run their own lives because you know better. I got news for you Fields… you can’t run my, or anyone else’s, life better and if it’s up to me (and so far it is) you can’t run it PERIOD.
June 8th, 2011 at 10:08 am
This same agri-business that Mr. Fields so quickly denounces and dismisses allows us to eat better than we ever did.
There would be no way to feed the majority of our urban population without agri-business, which Mr. Fields finds so evil. Despite these evils, people in the world live longer than ever.
Do you know what people in China, where American agri-business has almost no foothold, want to eat the minute they get a few dollars in their pocket? Meat and dairy products.
Meat is the best delivery system for protein. Cavemen and cave women preferred to eat meat.
Fields and his nanny state like-minded liberals would have the government tell us what was healthy for us. He envisions a future where everybody is forced to eat their tofu and like it.
The key to a healthy life is moderation. Moderation in eating and moderation in everything. It is personal responsibility.
June 8th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
wow Sammy boy, being rude, slanderous and rude again? Does it run in the family? What in the world of “journalism” does Kurlanders weight have to do with the facts of school children’s diets? Does it make you uncomfortable write an article (with your daughter no less, what a great role model) without adding an insult every time? This isn’t the FIRST need for attention written word from you. As for Kari, good luck dear, maybe one day you will see that Karma is a powerful force when dishing out crap at other peoples expense and personal dignity.
June 8th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Kurlander was not lecturing anyone on school diets. He simply objected to government cameras monitoring kids’ food selections and intake. Talk about a nanny state!! I think he made a good point. Can’t you address the issues without attacking Mr. Kurlander personally?
Society always needs scapegoats and these days, it’s smokers and the overweight. These scapegoats allow people like the Fields to feel morally superior even as they make vile comments about others. Their so-called “concern about public health,” is just a way to put themselves on a pedestel and look down on other people.
June 9th, 2011 at 1:03 am
Wow Mr. Fields…you and your daughter must be illiterate. He didn’t lecture anyone on school diets. The article was about big brother being too intrusive into the monitoring of it.