|
Hooter saw the news from USDA—pertaining to the White House
Memorandum—inviting the public to submit ideas about how the
government, private business and citizens could work together to
tackle childhood obesity. He had to respond.
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
First off, I tried to read the
news release from your office pertaining to fat kids, what you
refer to as childhood obesity: “…The Presidential Memo that
established the Task Force (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-establishing-a-task-force-childhood-obesity)
directed senior officials from executive agencies and the White
House to develop a comprehensive interagency action plan that
details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks and
goals, describes research gaps and needs, and assists in the
development of legislative, budgetary, and policy proposals that
can improve the health and well-being of children, their
families, and communities. The Task Force was also directed to
review the following objectives…”
No offense, but what kind of
hogwash is that? Like my 5th grade English teacher used to tell
us between fainting spells, grading our essays, “Just say it!
For the love of God in Heaven above, quit beating around the
bush with a bunch of gibberish and just say it.”
Of course, and not bragging, but
by then we could read, write and do all of the big numbers.
Anyway, once I made my way through, it seems to me you folks
need to come to grips with the fact that some folks are just
naturally fat, like some folks are just naturally skinny. My
second-cousin Lucy comes to mind. Bless her heart, ever since we
were kids, anywhere she stood in the house, she was next to the
dinner table, if you get my drift. She could look at an ad for
ice cream and pop a seam. Another cousin, Boo, could eat
chocolate pecan pie from now to the Second Coming and still hide
in his own shadow at sunrise.
And you know what? There’s
absolutely nothing wrong with being fat, any more than there is
with being skinnier than an empty tapeworm or somewhere in
between.
Speaking of which, isn’t that
what you folks in government call discrimination, when you focus
on one group at the exclusion of others? What are you doing for
the skinny kids of the world?
Lest I digress like you folks are
known to, unless you outlaw video games and TV…oops forget I
said that; the way you folks are going about governing, you’re
liable to try that. The point being, from babies on, people have
no incentive to be as physically active as they were when we
grew up. And we were a bunch of sissies compared to our parents
and our grand parents and so on.
Once you get to be working age in
this country and you’re in that middle-class bracket that
everybody likes to talk about and no one seems to want to
support, once you start working that’s about all you’ve got time
for because so much of what you make goes to support folks on
either end of the economic scale. Mind you, I’m all about
capitalism. I just wish everyone had to play by the same rules.
When only about half of us are paying income tax, I’ve got to
wonder where the equality is in that.
So, unless you happen to be one
of the minority working in a physical job, since there’s so
little time for anything else, is it any wonder that folks are
getting fatter?
As for kids, I’d like to believe
every one of them has access to at least a basketball court, or
enough space to toss a Frisbee. Since that’s not the case,
unfortunately, why not give them the access to physical activity
with a purpose?
For discussion’s sake, let’s call
it the Community Physical Beautification Program or CPBP for
short. Check your history books—there was a program back in the
1930’s called the Civilian Conservation Corps that provided
emergency employment and vocational training to unemployed men.
Far as I can tell, this wasn’t a hand-out program by any stretch
of the imagination. Tax payers got a whole bunch in return, like
parks, public roads and whatnot.
In every community today, no matter how big or small, there’s at
least one eyesore—lots or old ball fields overgrown with weeds,
abandoned houses and buildings—you get the idea.
Why not organize a supervised work crew and pay these overweight
kids to get off their duffs and clean up sites like these?
Never mind the physical exercise,
imagine the psychological aspect of folks discovering perhaps
for the first time what it’s like to set out to do something,
look behind them and see something done. In case you haven’t
experienced it, there is no happier tiredness than falling into
bed exhausted after putting in a dark-to-dark day setting fence
posts, working calves, bucking hay bales or anything else that
needs to be done.
Up front, I realize you’d need a
sizeable litigation fund to fight the inevitable lawsuits. After
all, there’s no escaping the fact there would be all kinds of
risks, like folks getting sunburned, smashing thumbs with
hammers, picking up a stickers or splinters, stepping on nails,
etc.
When I grew up we called these
kinds of accidents dumb luck, clumsiness or poor planning, and
you were a whiner if you tried to blame any of that stuff on
someone else.
Come to think of it, the CPBP
could be a model for other programs like the federal and state
prison systems. Best as I can tell, there’s more than 2 million
folks in jail. The last statistic I could find said it cost
$22,632 per head per year to keep a federal prison—that was in
2001. Surely, there’s a way to put these folks to work without
competing with the goods and services provided by those who
aren’t incarcerated.
Of course, you’d have to figure
out all the objectives, inter-agency strategies, research gaps
and whatnot.
And, you’d have to accept the
fact that some folks don’t want anyone trying to help them,
especially the government, or that they’ll take what you give
them and screw it up.
That’s just how it is.
Yours truly in thick and thin
(pardon the pun),
Hooter J. McCormick |
