Is It Time to Start Waterboarding Fat People?

I have another short back-and-forth over at the L.A. Times, this one on child obesity. My sparring partner, the Manhattan Institute's Kay Hymowitz, actually read the May Newsweek story on fat kids. Here's what she found:

According to former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona, "As we look to the future and where childhood obesity will be in 20 years … it is every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today. It is the terrorist threat from within."

I'm not sure whether we should be more or less afraid of the "War on Terror" now that the phrase terrorist threat means "bad thing."

Comments

Elemenope | June 25, 2008, 12:55pm | #

Wow.

Just wow.

TallDave | June 25, 2008, 12:58pm | #

Don't worry, I have it on good authority that in 20 years everyone who isn't getting lots of exercise swimming will be dead.

Naga Sadow | June 25, 2008, 12:59pm | #

I believe that only fat people who wear thongs to the beach should be waterboarded.

MP | June 25, 2008, 1:01pm | #

Funny thing is, from a cost perspective (particularly in our quasi-socialist medical system), it's actually far more threatening than today's terrorist threat. Of course, that's partially because today's terrorist threat isn't all that threatening.

Does this mean that Al Qaeda is now going to be secretly distributing Twinkies to our nation's children?

x,y | June 25, 2008, 1:04pm | #

TallDave for the win.

Art | June 25, 2008, 1:04pm | #

Carmona exaggerating health claims in an attempt to get us to do something through government intervention.

Say it isn’t so!!!

Episiarch | June 25, 2008, 1:04pm | #

Is It Time to Start Waterboarding Fat People?

Wouldn't Diet Coke-boarding be more appropriate?

Considering that the drug warriors almost instantly conflated drug consumption with aiding terrorism, how does this surprise anyone?

Mick | June 25, 2008, 1:05pm | #

How terrifying the thought that someone out there might be happy...

Ska | June 25, 2008, 1:05pm | #

So restaurants will be recruiting waiters from the DHS?

Anthony | June 25, 2008, 1:10pm | #

I foresee the development of a new terrorism threat level advisory system, ranging from Side Salad with no-fat dressing (Low) to Double Quarter Pounder with cheese Value Meal, Supersized (To the Fallout Shelter!)

John Thacker | June 25, 2008, 1:17pm | #

Richard Carmona? He's the Surgeon General who claimed that the Administration "interfered with science" by refusing to let him advocate for various policies like banning all tobacco use. I guess treating obesity like terrorism was on that list as well.

Guy Montag | June 25, 2008, 1:26pm | #

Is It Time to Start Waterboarding Fat People?

Yes, after I lose 15 Lbs.

Jennifer | June 25, 2008, 1:31pm | #

Having a fatass trip and fall on you is just as bad as having a 110-story building collapse and fall on you.

JW | June 25, 2008, 1:33pm | #

"As we look to the future and where childhood obesity will be in 20 years … it is every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today. It is the terrorist threat from within."

Improvised
Explosive
Discharge

Everyone has a little man wearing a bomb jacket in their colon. We only need to get in touch with him to win this war.

That said, I plan on siding with the insurgents.

SugarFree | June 25, 2008, 1:40pm | #

So, how many calories does waterboarding burn? I'd like figures for both boarder and boardee; the treadmill has been getting mighty boring.

Mister DNA | June 25, 2008, 1:41pm | #

They hate us for our freedom fries.

madmikefisk | June 25, 2008, 1:42pm | #

Wouldn't Diet Coke-boarding be more appropriate?

No; NutraSweet gives me migraines :)

Granted, I'm not fat in any real sense of the word... until you go by the BMI numbers, in which case I border on obese (and something tells me that's what they'll be using to determine whether somebody is fat, despite the fact that I'm, um, just a bit broad-shouldered).

SugarFree | June 25, 2008, 1:44pm | #

NutraSweet gives me migraines

Then don't read my posts, assho... oh, wait...

Damn, Epi.

thoreau | June 25, 2008, 2:09pm | #

Having a fatass trip and fall on you is just as bad as having a 110-story building collapse and fall on you.

Everybody knows that exercise doesn't actually melt fat, at least not at room temperature. If fat was melting at room temperature, it could only be because they changed their HFCS intake.

Naga Sadow | June 25, 2008, 2:10pm | #

MMMMMMMmMmmmmmmm . . . HFCS . . . .
*say in Homer Simpson voice*

Episiarch | June 25, 2008, 2:17pm | #

Having a fatass trip and fall on you is just as bad as having a 110-story building collapse and fall on you.

You laugh, but it's true.

NutraSweet gives me migraines

Me too, he's really annoying. Don't read his posts.

Damn, Epi.

What can I say? I'm good at giving nicknames that stick.

Everybody knows that exercise doesn't actually melt fat, at least not at room temperature. If fat was melting at room temperature, it could only be because they changed their HFCS intake

Exercise doesn't melt fat, but controlled demolitions do!

drewt333 | June 25, 2008, 2:18pm | #

So obesity is 'the terrorist threat from within,' or a form of extreme fundamentalist insurgency? 'scuse me while I head on down to Krispy Kreme and declare jihad.

Anthony | June 25, 2008, 2:25pm | #

You don't really believe that a fatass just trips and falls on you, do you? At free-fall speed, into his own "footprint?" That defies the laws of physics! Note the undulations in his blubber, descending down his body, as he was falling. That was a controlled fall, I tell you.

www. fatassfallingtroofers.com!!

Tellty | June 25, 2008, 2:27pm | #

If the fat kid has a bomb, then I'll worry about it. Otherwise...

Matthew | June 25, 2008, 2:28pm | #

where terrorist threat means "bad thing."

I would amend that to, "Something I disapprove of".

brotherben© | June 25, 2008, 2:33pm | #

You say taliban, I say cinna-bun.

Guy Montag | June 25, 2008, 3:05pm | #

Won't anybody think of the children?

They are being recruited as terrorists by big HFCS and BIG Mack!

George Orwell | June 25, 2008, 3:07pm | #

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.

SugarFree | June 25, 2008, 3:08pm | #

BIG Mack!

Long-haul trucking is making our kids fat?

I KNEW IT!

Guy Montag | June 25, 2008, 3:15pm | #

SF,

Yea, they haul the Big Macs to the golden arches!

TrickyVic | June 25, 2008, 3:32pm | #

Improvised
Explosive
Discharge


What you get after eating at White Castles.

twisted merkin | June 25, 2008, 3:40pm | #

where childhood obesity will be in 20 years

Won't the children be adults then?

SugarFree | June 25, 2008, 3:40pm | #

The first time I heard of people using ground-up White Castle burgers as turkey stuffing, I literally gagged.

creech | June 25, 2008, 4:19pm | #

Make the little bastards walk five miles to school, uphill both ways, through the snow, everyday like we had to.

tassawwuf | June 25, 2008, 4:41pm | #

they could waterboard that recently ex-fat guy from the tv commercial for me...the one that "gave all his fat clothes to his fat friends"...

Jennifer | June 25, 2008, 4:43pm | #

You laugh, but it's true.

Who's laughing, Epi? Not me. If the government were really serious about fighting terrorism, they'd make it illegal to sell clothes any larger than a size two. That way, all the terrorists would have to stay home lest they violate public nudity laws.

Lousy fatass terrorists.

tassawwuf | June 25, 2008, 4:43pm | #

lol, you know this guy

thoreau | June 25, 2008, 5:06pm | #

You don't really believe that a fatass just trips and falls on you, do you? At free-fall speed, into his own "footprint?" That defies the laws of physics! Note the undulations in his blubber, descending down his body, as he was falling. That was a controlled fall, I tell you.

Not to mention that not a single Israeli was there on the sidewalk when the fatass fell over. It's almost as though they had been warned. How else to explain that when this particular person fell over in this particular place there were no Israelis next to him?

liberty mike | June 25, 2008, 5:49pm | #

Obesity epidemic?

Pay attention to the CDC?

Fat chance.

dpsc | June 25, 2008, 10:08pm | #

MP says: Funny thing is, from a cost perspective (particularly in our quasi-socialist medical system), it's actually far more threatening than today's terrorist threat.

On the other hand the cost of water-boarding fat people in our warming world is much higher. It takes a lot more water. Plus you have to guard against them spontaneously becoming superheroes named things like "Whale-Man" and "Elephant-Seal-Woman" because you mismatched the current somewhere in your impedance regulator. That can be bad, bad indeed. I speak from experience, and now stay far away from the coastline (not easy in Florida).

Episiotomy says: I'm good at giving nicknames that stick.

I wish I had that superpower.