Fat Chances

Jacob Sullum from the February 1998 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

More broadly, Klein and Fumento offer competing visions of how one ought to live, and each is worth considering. But lurking in the background is a hint that persuasion might give way to coercion. Klein is quite sympathetic to the fat-acceptance movement that Fumento rightly criticizes for contributing to "the cult of victimization"; it's not hard to imagine him supporting legislation or litigation aimed at forcing businesses to "accept" and "accommodate" the obese.

Fumento, for his part, is aware that his book could be taken as a call for the government to wage a war on obesity. "Nobody's arguing that it should be illegal to be such a glutton and such a sloth that you can't get around without an electric scooter," he writes. Although I'm sure this was meant to be reassuring, it had the opposite effect on me. Fumento says "gluttony and sloth need to be demonized to the extent that cigarettes have been," but "this doesn't mean oppressing fat people." The precedent is not exactly encouraging.

Senior Editor Jacob Sullum is the author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health, forthcoming this spring from The Free Press.

(HEALTH AND SAFETY, VICES)

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