New York Times's Frank Bruni Approves of Bloomberg's Big Gulp of Big Government in New York City
So much for libertine Manhattan. White House reporter turned liberal columnist Frank Bruni supports New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's overbearing initiative to downsize the sodas New Yorkers will be allowed to purchase in restaurants and movie theaters, in the name of fighting obesity: "Trimming a Fat City."
While Michelle Obama focused on carrots, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brandished a stick. It’s what we deserve. Cry all you want about a nanny state, but as a city and a nation we’ve gorged and guzzled past the point where a gentle nudge toward roughage suffices. We need a weight watcher willing to mete out some stricter discipline.
Bruni even admitted in his Sunday Review column that "It’s in many senses an absurd and random gesture." But in classic big-government fashion, Bruni used the existence of other infringements on personal freedom to rationalize still more.
The proposed ban is also an act of government control and regulation that makes no small number of people squeamish. Should we not have the liberty to ingest what we elect to ingest, and to decide whether the pleasure is worth any ill effects? Are we not capable stewards of our own welfare? In general, yes, but the government has taxed cigarettes to high heaven, as a means (successful) of steering us away from them, and made it illegal to partake of many recreational drugs. Like those substances, heavily sugared soft drinks are wholly unnecessary and are implicated in health problems that wind up affecting all of us, not just the individual suffering from them. Food ceased to be a frontier too far when the fraction of American adults who qualify as obese climbed above one in three.
Taking the high road, Bruni made some fun of fat strangers ahead of him in line in Iowa.
We’re fat, folks. Seriously, dangerously fat. And you don’t need statistics to tell you that; you just need to look around. All three people ahead of me in line in a food shop in Des Moines last month qualified as morbidly obese; they had 900 pounds -- easy --among them. One of every two people in line with me at a Coney Island concession stand last weekend were carrying at least 25 extra pounds. When this many people are this overweight, you have not only an epidemic. You have a new normal, a context in which each obese person is less likely to recognize and appreciate the magnitude of his or her health problem because it’s entirely unexceptional.
Bruni rationalized Bloomberg's authoritarianism and didn't mention the hypocrisy, pushed by NBC host Matt Lauer, that Bloomberg presided over "NYC Donut Day" the day after announcing the upcoming ban on extra-large sodas.
Bloomberg and Farley aren’t taking anything away from us, not really. They’re just pushing back against the new normal. They’re trying to reroute our expectations and tweak our habits. “The portions that people are served have a big influence on what they consume,” Farley told me. “It doesn’t seem logical, but that’s the observation.” If given a larger measure or enticed to purchase it, many people will upsize their intake without quite recognizing it.
The proposed ban is a step too incremental and contained to be considered a serious challenge to personal freedoms. In fact its greatest potential flaw is its possible futility. And any whiff it gives off of overzealous government intervention must be seen in the context of the billions upon billions of advertising and marketing dollars spent annually by the fast-food industry on exhorting us to pig out.
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Comments
What if Bloomberg enforced actual criminal law?
Submitted by JeffC... on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 10:04pm.
I'd think Frank Bruni would have a fit, what with oppressing the underprivileged.
Dear Frank
Submitted by Franksam on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 10:10pm.
You might need a father figure to instill some discipline in your life, but I don't. BTW, WE did not overindulge, maybe YOU did. Tell you what, since you like domination, come over to my house and I'll have you cut my grass on your knees with a pair of scissors.
I'm not getting on my knees for you or Bloomberg.
PS: You should stop watching the ads that big 'Farma' puts out that make you eat too much.
I remember when
Submitted by Boudin on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 10:16pm.
Fascism was unpopular,,,,
You dimwits are sick sick sick!
Glad to see that NYC is a
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 11:41pm.
Glad to see that NYC is a happy, productive, crime free diverse uptopia where the government had nothing better to do. I say arrest on felony charges, Blacks who cook ribs and chicken and then go after those Italians and their damn pizza.
Bloomberg is a shithead, there is no other word to describe him.
First they came for eggs
Submitted by CO2Maker on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 11:51pm.
Then they came for salt.
Then they came for transfats.
Then they returned the eggs to us because, oops, eggs are good.
Then they came for big sugary drinks.
Then the Noo Yawk Times tells us salt is good for us, too!
Wait. What? What did the NYT say?
http://snipurl.com/23t626i
Oh, yeah. There's still cigarettes. the Hitler of ingestible substances. You know the Nicotine Corollary to Godwin's Law: Everything suspected of being bad for your health is eventually compared to cigarettes. (And addiction becomes a medical condition covered by the ADA.)
Sounds like the perfect world
Submitted by Sude23 on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 12:02pm.
Sounds like the perfect world of Demolition Man. I think I will take up knitting...
Smokers stand around, puff the cancer sticks, and laugh at you.
Submitted by The Vet on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 11:54pm.
Everyone stood around a cheered as the nanny-state put more and more restrictions via laws, taxes, and ordinances on smokers. Smokers told you over and over, you let this stand, and it is an issue of freedom after all, you let this stand and they will come after something you enjoy.
Even being an ex-smoker, I can think of no better ---
Submitted by matthewdean on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 2:00am.
example.
Not allowing smoking, in restaurants and mercantile establishments especially, was fair, and made sense.
It became unlawful in some cities to smoke in parks; and now at some beaches in CA, prevailing on or off shore winds notwithstanding.
A reformer looks around and finds something that doesn't affect his/her lifestyle, then reforms like crazy.
It is often exceedingly difficult to undo the good that do-gooders do.
MD
Say, MD There's ah Beirut restaurant in Panama City.
Submitted by upcountrywater on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 3:27am.
Got Hookas all over the place, flavored water extra.
Like 12 bucks to smoke a bowl.Exhaling tobacco smoke on folk dining, priceless.
Hay Panama...Shares legal hooker laws just like the country next door, dat wood beee Columbia.. ...
If you aren't careful you could wonder into a Casino ....Or down a man hole with no cover...
Dang iron thieves.
You Didn't Build That.
As always with liberals,
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 8:22am.
incrementalism is the name of the game.
Readers here "of a certain age" will remember that the crusade against cigarettes began in the 1970's with the "very reasonable" accommodation of a "no smoking" section on airplanes.
progressive slaves
Submitted by marineson on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 3:05am.
its amayzing that we have a whole class of people that actually think they can make decisions for other people,,,and to some extent they are winning this battle,,,we have a progressive slave mayor of new york that will actually get on tv and tell people,,,i know whats best for you and since i have the power you will listen to me...lol..amayzing...why are people so slavish to the will of goverment these days.. we the people must not tolerate such impudence....an unjust law is no law at all....mlk
protest
Submitted by MidAmerica on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 8:05am.
The eateries in NYC should protest while they can and make an even larger sugary drink, perhaps in a theater popcorn tub, and call it 'Da Mayor'
Awesome!
Submitted by CobraMan on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 1:43pm.
That's a great idea!
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
What's wrong with shame?
Submitted by CO2Maker on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 8:07am.
People openly deride and scorn smokers. They eye-roll as they pass the outcasts next to the front door of the office building, they look sideways at people with a pack of cigarettes in their pocket. And they run all kinds of commercials on TV showing the results of tobacco cancer, or pleading with mom and dad not to smoke in the car.
Do that with being fat. Okay, Leno makes a few jokes about fat Walmart customers, but I'm thinking of a concerted campaign to change people's habits. Not the fashion-industry-likes-Twiggy screed about "body dysmorphism" and the promotion of "full-figured models." No, just straight talk: Don't eat crappy diets and don't' serve them to your kids, either.
I know. Sue the sugar and soda manufacturers, like they did to the cigarette makers. Get a big settlement and make *them* pay for the ads, just like the tobacco companies have to do.
Buffoonberg!
Submitted by HelenS on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 9:00am.
The mayor is an ass. On Drudge right now is a headline saying Buffoonberg is behind an effort to reduce the number of arrests for smoking pot...
...but he wants to stop people from sitting on curbs!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MAN?!
Reminds me of Pro 27:22 - "Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding him like grain with a pestle, you will not remove his folly from him."
It may not hurt but it might be satisfying to at least try.
Me - "The libs/dems of today are the Quislings of former years - the cowards who would vote a fraud into office in exchange for handouts from the devil."
Has Bloomberg gone too far?
Submitted by Mary Louise Turner on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 9:17am.
According to the New York Post, two polls indicate that Mayor (Nanny) Bloomberg's ban on sweet sodas is unpopular with both New Yorkers and Americans! And yet this clown ignores his own people and imposes liberal "martial law" on them. Good grief!
Diet Police
Submitted by minky on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 12:40pm.
I predict a day when doctors will be required to program everyone's medical information onto a card. At the grocery store (restaurant, etc.), the check-out person will scan this card and, if shoppers have chosen food items which are deemed to be incompatible with their medical condition, they will not be able to purchase those items. Remember, you heard it here first!!
And the ban will help, how?
Submitted by CobraMan on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 1:17pm.
"We’re fat, folks. Seriously, dangerously fat."
And the ban on big cups will help, how? Portion control doesn't work.
By the way, speak for yourself, lardass. I'm 6 foot, 152 pounds. Does that sound "seriously, dangerously fat" to you?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
It didn't work
Submitted by CobraMan on Tue, 06/05/2012 - 1:41pm.
"In general, yes, but the government has taxed cigarettes to high heaven, as a means (successful) of steering us away from them..."
I hate to break it to you, idiot, but people still smoke (I'm smoking right now). They smoke a LOT. They are even smoking in NY.
According to the CDC, more than 303 billion cigarettes were purchased in the United States in 2010. (That's the latest data they have.) That's 1 billion, 515 million packs. That's around 990 cigarettes per person per year, or about 50 packs. And that's just cigarettes. Cigars account for 13.3 billion, somewhere around 30 Cigars per person per year. Still think all those laws, all those taxes, have helped? It sure doesn't look like it!
Besides, increasing taxes on a product isn't the same as restricting the amount you can buy at any given time. People can buy as much tobacco as they like at any given time. People can buy a single pack, a single carton, or a thousand cartons at a time, if they wish. So the comparison isn't valid. Which makes me wonder, why are you using it?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.