DrRich deeply, humbly, sorrowfully and most abjectly apologizes.

When one fancies himself an ironist, a satirist, one must be very, very careful. The ironist attempts to illustrate the limitations of a point of view with which he or she strongly disagrees, by purporting to adopt that point of view, and then taking it to its logical and outlandish extremes, in order to demonstrate how absurd it is at its root. But the irony only works when the people who actually hold that absurd point of view would somehow be brought up short, or embarrassed, or angered by it.

“That’s not what we’re saying at all!” is the response the ironist hopes to elicit. Because once the opponents make that response, it then becomes their obligation to attempt to explain  exactly how their point of view does not logically lead one to such absurd, counterproductive, or stupid conclusions. And, if the ironist is correct, his opponents will be unable to do so, and will be left with name-calling, labeling, and vituperation – which, by any objective measure, is a form of capitulation.

And judging by the names he has been called, the labels that have been hung upon him, and the vituperations with which he has been pasted, DrRich has generally been quite satisfied with the results of his occasional attempts at irony and satire.

But his most recent effort has failed, and failed badly, and for this he is most grievously regretful.

For, no sooner had DrRich penned his most recent post patiently explaining why Governor Christie is simply too fat to run for president, than sundry Progressives (the very target of DrRich’s badly misjudged piece) began publishing exactly the same opinion, using the same arguments which DrRich had considered to be the fruits of irony. In fact, one or two of them actually predated DrRich’s publication date. (Had he known this, he would have aborted his effort altogether.)

Regular readers will know that DrRich has long railed against the demonization of obesity, and has liberally employed irony to do so. By ostensibly supporting those who would cast the spirits of fat people into herds of swine, DrRich has (until now, he thought) effectively shown the moral bankruptcy of the anti-obesity movement.

The anti-obesity movement, DrRich thinks, is like many of the crusades which have been taken up by Progressives (for instance, the environmental movement and the deification of “diversity”), in that it takes what at its root is a good idea (in this case, the unhealthfulness of extreme obesity), and converts it into a sledgehammer with which to beat the populace into compliance with top-down, expert-driven controls over individual freedoms.

It is an unavoidable result of publicly funded healthcare that any behavior of any individual which increases the likelihood they will need “extra” healthcare services, will potentially rob those of us who do not choose such unhealthful behaviors of medical services which might otherwise be available to us. Therefore, when healthcare is entirely publicly funded, it is inevitable that individual behaviors will need to be controlled by some Central Authority.

The obese are the chosen first target for asserting such controls. To render those controls publicly acceptable, it is necessary to reduce obese individuals to a state in which limiting their individual freedom of action is widely considered acceptable. That is, they need to be demonized.

So we ignore that gross obesity is almost always genetically mediated, greatly enhanced by environmental factors largely out of an individual’s control. We choose to blame obesity entirely on a lack of self-discipline, on a fundamental failure of the individual himself, and we behave as if this failure renders fat people beneath contempt. We do not do this with smokers, or drug abusers, and even seem reluctant to do it with child molesters. But fat people are fair game.

So when DrRich said that Governor Christie is just too damned fat to be a candidate for president, because fat people are lazy, slothful, lethargic, and self-indulgent; and because allowing a fatty to aspire to such a high position would create the false impression that obese people are worthy of any consideration whatsoever, and would make people think that the obese ought to have the same individual freedoms as the rest of us; and when DrRich concluded that Christie’s candidacy would therefore be a serious setback to the Progressive program (which is to say, controlling individual behaviors for the great benefit of the collective); and when he therefore urged the Governor to stay in New Jersey, except perhaps to occasionally cross the state line just long enough to stock up on Philly cheesesteaks; he thought he had taken the thing to the outlandish extremes customary to a master of irony.

So imagine DrRich’s dismay when, just after publishing his diatribe, he saw Michael Kinsley’s article on Bloomberg also declaring Christie too fat to be president. The reason? Because “a presidential candidate should be judged on behavior and character, not just on policies.” Fat people, Kinsley elaborates, are a “perfect symbol of our country at the moment, with appetites out of control and discipline near zilch.” In other words, fat people have shown themselves, by their very obesity, to be entirely unworthy characters, and being unworthy, should not aspire to the presidency  – or presumably, to any other position of importance.

Then there’s Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, who agrees that Christie’s weight should prevent him from running, but does so for kinder reasons than Kinsley’s. Robinson is worried about the Governor’s health. That’s kind of him, but he also can’t help remarking that the “obesity epidemic” is costing the government a lot of money, and indeed, he implies that people like Governor Christie are responsible for the massive federal deficit. Since Christie is likely to remain fat whether or not he runs for president, when one parses Robinsons’ sentences one can only conclude that his real argument is that it would simply be wrong for a person whose behavior is costing us so much money, and is thus endangering the future of the nation, to aspire to the presidency.

So there you have it. Actual Progressives are making the very same arguments for Christie to stay out of the race that DrRich made, in what he thought was a brilliantly ironic blog post.

DrRich’s description of how the obese are regarded is no longer an outlandish extrapolation of prior statements and policies. It’s now official. The party line on obesity is this: Fat people have chosen to become fat, and by so doing, have overtly displayed, for everyone to see, their utter lack of discipline, self-control, self-regard, and concern for their fellow citizens. So the obese have no reason to expect the same rights, privileges, freedoms and considerations enjoyed by us thinner (or at least, less fat) citizens.

DrRich unwisely tried to satirize the Progressive position on obesity, without realizing that this position had already “progressed” well beyond irony. His readers ought to expect more from him than this, and so he abjectly apologizes.

DrRich only asks his readers to please take into account, when you consider the Progressives’ actual behavior and their own words, how very difficult it is becoming to satirize them. DrRich may soon be reduced to straight reporting.

From all appearances, Republican voters are desperate for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to throw his hat into the ring, and announce that he’s running for the Republican nomination for President. And, while the governor has made dozens of absolutely definitive statements utterly denying that he is going to run, he nonetheless seems quite happy to continue relentlessly teasing his supporters with the possibility. (Just the other night he gave a speech at the Reagan Library in which he discussed foreign policy and other topics not notably relevant to running his state. What’s up with that?)

There are several good reasons Governor Christie gives for not running. He promised the voters of New Jersey that he would stay in office and do everything he could to fix the fiscal disaster that his predecessors created there. He notes that he doesn’t have the fire in the belly which, apparently, one must have for this sort of contest. He does not have very much experience with governance, and has said repeatedly he does not feel ready to become the leader of the free world.

None of these reasons, of course, are dispositive, and all of them could be dispensed with very quickly. Governor Christie is pissing off so many people in New Jersey so quickly that it is not inconceivable that, if he asked them politely, the majority would soon give him a pass on all his promises, and bid him Godspeed in his new endeavors. Fires in the belly, it is said, come and go, and one might just show up at any time. And as for feeling ready to become the leader of the free world, well, the bar there has been lowered so much in the past couple of years that even DrRich – who balked at the responsibility of becoming secretary of his book club – would no longer be intimidated at the prospect. I mean, what the heck?

And so, despite all his denials and all the reasons he gives for staying out, it remains entirely possible that Governor Christie may still get in the race.

DrRich is alarmed by this possibility. And so should we all be, as Governor Christie’s potential candidacy poses a very great threat to us all.

You see, dear reader, the governor is just too damned fat.

Our leaders have just spent nearly three years demonizing the obese, and convincing we the people that fat people, by virtue of their unsightly and self-induced rotundity, are a grave threat to the well-being of each of us.

Here is what we have been taught: Aside from the obvious negative characteristics of fat people (their sloth, gluttony, laziness, selfishness, &c.), and the fact that they are unpleasant to behold and inconvenient to encounter (they are slow, they take up too much space in the grocery aisles and on buses, and they sweat more than you and me), and the fact that obesity is contagious so that fat people should be isolated and shunned, and the fact that the obese probably account for global warming, and thus will ultimately be responsible for untold death and destruction; aside from all these undeniable truths, the obese consume far more than their rightful allotment of healthcare resources, which, per force, leaves much less healthcare available to us holier persons. They are, in fact, trying to kill us.

Demonizing the obese is critically important to the program we have embarked upon in America. Obamacare may give the Central Authority the legal standing to control the personal behaviors and personal choices of individual Americans, but it does not give them the moral authority to do so, nor the ability to actually enforce that control. Americans, despite 50 years of indoctrination to the contrary, still value their individualism, and will still balk – or worse – when they perceive their personal freedoms are being taken away.

The obese are supplying our leaders the vehicle they need for breaking down this last barrier. For, if everyone can agree that obesity is evil, and so are the people who allow themselves to become fat (despite all the “help” they get from expensive public service announcements, calorie counts posted in restaurants, and lectures from First Ladies), then how can we object when our leaders are forced to take stronger measures to “encourage” better behavior, or, if necessary, to punish their behavior?

By virtue of their now-universally-accepted state of sinfulness, the obese are fair game for whatever actions the Central Authority deems necessary to cause them to either lose weight or pay for their sins. From appearances, such measures are likely to begin with taxing soft drinks and Twinkies and whatever other foodstuffs the experts (in their wisdom) deem to be illegitimate sources of calories. But really, the sky’s the limit. For instance, under the undeniable proposition that it costs more energy to move a fat person from point A to point B, whatever the mode of transportation, the obese could be subjected to a special carbon tax, based on their BMI. The periodic mandatory “weigh-ins” such a tax would require would serve the useful purpose of public humiliation, an important incentive to weight loss.

Further humiliations could be visited upon the fat by designating special isolated areas in the workplace (ideally, an area fully exposed to the elements) for fat people to consume their calories. This latter strategy, of course, is derived from the same restrictions placed on smokers, and can be legitimized by the same sort of logic. That is, the authorities can invoke the prospect of second-hand obesity* to induce fear and loathing of the fat, and cause them to become socially isolated.
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*The “scientific” conclusion that obesity is contagious, i.e., that those who associate with the obese are more likely to become obese themselves, has been proffered by academics employing the same kind of statistical legerdemain used to blame global warming on fat people. Clearly, obesity has now become so toxic to the survival of mankind that any paper submitted to a medical journal which offers some new reason to despise the fat – no matter how absurd – will be cheerfully accepted by the editors, and published with great fanfare.
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It goes almost without saying that the ultimate censure would simply be to withhold healthcare services from fat people. This is a strategy that is already being employed by the British healthcare system,  a system we are urged by many of our leaders, such as Dr. Berwick, to employ as a model.

The great benefit of taking the demonization of the obese to its logical conclusion, of course, is that by doing so, the Central Authority will have established the very important precedent of selectively enforcing certain rules, based on a person’s behavioral habits*, in order to achieve Social Justice.

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*While demonizing the obese is considered legitimate by many because fat people “choose” to become fat through their selfish behavior, it is nonetheless true that becoming truly obese (as opposed to becoming merely overweight) is almost always strongly mediated by genetic and metabolic factors. Blessed with the same genes and metabolisms, many of us svelter, more holy individuals would also have become fatties.
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This is a truly critical precedent to set. This precedent will ultimately allow our Central Authorities to restrict, control and tax virtually any human behavior they can claim may lead to an increased risk of healthcare expenditures. Such behaviors may include (in addition to obvious things like smoking and alcohol consumption), one’s choice of occupation, participation in sports, hobbies, hours spent or miles traveled on the highways, and how well you follow the lifestyle changes prescribed by your PCP in your annual, very-strongly-encouraged, “free” wellness checks. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of any choice one makes in daily living that does not, in some manner, impact on one’s likelihood of requiring medical services, and which thus would not be subject to central control.

All this will become possible because Americans are willing to accede to the demonization of their obese neighbors.

So now we see why Governor Christie must not run. Think of the damage he could do!

The prospect of a fat man campaigning for President – an endeavor which everyone admits takes an incredible amount of initiative, intelligence, energy, and a robust constitution – would itself undermine important “truths” about fat people upon which we base much of our (hard won) hatred of them. Worse yet, if Governor Christie actually managed to secure the Republican nomination, there’s an excellent chance that a majority of voters would actually cast their ballots for him! And he might actually become President!

What would that say about the general acceptability of obese people in our society?

Governor Christie’s candidacy would do untold damage to the critically important obesity paradigm which our leaders have painstakingly established over the past few years, and thus, would seriously damage their entire program.

And it is for this reason that Governor Christie must not run.

Note: DrRich now realizes that he has made a major mistake by writing this post, and here offers an apology and a weak explanation for his error.

DrRich is amazed at all the attention being paid to the impending mid-term election.

Breathless commentators speculate endlessly whether Republicans will take over the House and Senate, or just the House; and small-time operatives who in the heat of battle blurt out words like “whore,” or “bitch” (it truly is the Year of the Woman!), or inflammatory phrases like “punishing our enemies,” are subjected to endless public psychoanalysis. The angst is palpable.

For those of us interested in healthcare reform the coming election is an interesting sideshow, but it will not substantially change the cascade of events that has been set in motion by a) history, b) the election of Mr. Obama and his dogged persistence in passing his healthcare legislation by whatever means necessary, and c) the implications of the election of New Jersey Governor Christie a year ago.

As DrRich has said to his readers countless times, the real meaning of Obamacare is that the job of covertly rationing America’s healthcare is being formally transferred from the insurance companies (which have had quite enough, and which did everything they could to see that Obamacare became law), to the government. That transfer of the responsibility for covert rationing to the government is merely the natural culmination of 50 years of history. And the fortuitous election of Mr. Obama is merely the particular event (like the dropping of a crystal into a supersaturated solution) that finally brought a historical inevitability to fruition.

But the election of Governor Christie – now that was a real Wild Card. Christie’s election revealed (to DrRich, at least) that the government’s takeover of covert rationing (which, obviously, requires a government takeover of healthcare) may not be the end of the story.

At this point, some of DrRich’s readers undoubtedly think he is referring to Christie’s conservative economic outlook; his willingness to take on public employees, teachers, and others whose unions, over the years, coerced and/or bribed corrupt politicians into awarding them unsustainable entitlements that are incompatible with a stable society. They think DrRich is referring to the fact that, if even the people of very-blue New Jersey are willing to elect such a conservative Republican, then the Progressive agenda (and hence Obamacare) must actually be in real trouble.

While there may indeed be something to this argument, it’s not at all what DrRich is referring to.

Rather, DrRich is referring to the fact that the voters of New Jersey, at a time when Mr. Obama’s popularity was still quite high, chose to violate a pattern they had established over the manifold generations, chose to knock the stars out of alignment, chose not to return to office Mr. Corzine, the incumbent Democrat in a strongly Democratic state, who was strongly supported by President Obama himself, and instead chose to break with all of history, with all tradition, with their primeval instinct, and with their common sense, and elect instead – a fat guy.

Electing a fat man, DrRich must point out, was not incidental. Corzine cagily made it a campaign issue by running campaign ads reminding New Jersey voters that Mr. Christie was obese, and that he was not. Mr. Christie himself was driven by this tactic into a public admission that he indeed was quite overweight (and offered the lame suggestion that his obesity was irrelevant to the job he was seeking).

Any voter pulling the lever was necessarily thinking, “fat guy, or skinny guy?” And they, with malice aforethought, picked the fat one.

This was absolutely stunning. The implications are too far-reaching to exaggerate.

For a long time now – but especially since the beginning of the Obama Presidency – a concerted and sophisticated campaign to begin “culling out” the obese has taken place. This campaign has been conducted with great energy by everyone who matters – the government, academia, various covertly-funded consumer groups, and numerous industries and enterprises whose success depends on lots of fat people becoming desperate to lose weight. We have been assured that the obese are fat by choice, and that as a result, by their own volition they have allowed themselves to become a threat to humanity (by, among other things, increasing global warming), and most especially, a threat to the fiscal stability of our healthcare system and therefore our nation.

The message is clear: If we don’t get the obesity epidemic under control we are lost as a people. (Historians may find it interesting to note that this epidemic was greatly accelerated in 1998, when the NIH changed the definitions of “overweight” and “obese” from a BMI of 28 and 32, respectively, to a BMI of 25 and 30. The very next morning, tens of millions of previously healthy Americans woke up to find themselves fat. Even more than most epidemics, this one developed with the speed of a tsunami.)

Obamacare – which places the control of the healthcare system into the beneficent hands of our political leaders – finally provides the tools to eliminate this scourge. It will take some tough love. But for the good of America (and, who knows? possibly for the good of the obese themselves) we’ve got to do it.

Central to our efforts to save our country is the conviction that the obese are different, and while they may be potentially salvageable as worthy humans, in their present state (posing as they do such an existential threat to the rest of us), they need to be (at the very least) ostracized.

Perhaps the most telling example of just how far we had come in this regard occurred in July, 2009, when President Obama named Dr. Regina Benjamin as Surgeon General. When it appeared from certain pictures and television images that Dr. Benjamin may be somewhat overweight, critics pounced immediately. How can one become the epaulet-wearing Head Doctor of All America, in the middle of a life-threatening obesity epidemic no less, and be fat? No fat person should ever rise to any position of prominence (where he or she could potentially become a role model for young Americans) – much less this particular position.

It must have brought a tear of joy to the anti-obesity crowd to learn that being obese now so demonstrably trumped being: a) an African American, b) a woman, c) a hero who dedicated herself to providing medical care to the Katrina-ravaged poor, and d) strongly supported by President Obama himself.

But all this progress (and all this hope) was dashed just a few months later by the voters of New Jersey, when they chose to elect a fatty.

When an obese Republican can be elevated to such a position of prominence and responsibility, and by a Democratic electorate to boot, the anti-obesity campaign has been set back by decades. That a rotund candidate could emerge victorious despite such an onslaught – and not, as the breathless conjectures of our professional punditry suggest, a Republican resurgence – is the real threat to healthcare reform.

A government-run healthcare system permits – nay, demands! – that we declare to the obese that their unsightly physiques are no longer a matter of personal choice, but are now a matter of legitimate public concern. The choices they are making – that is, their gluttony, sloth and all other manner of self-indulgence – are placing unwanted and unsustainable demands on us purer, svelter, fellow-citizens.

More importantly, ostracizing the obese sets an important precedent for our wise leaders to restrict, control and tax virtually any human behavior they can claim may lead to an increased risk of healthcare expenditures – which, really, encompasses virtually any human behavior you can think of. Furthermore, successfully dehumanizing the obese will establish that our society may, whenever it needs to, discriminate against the lower economic classes (since these classes are well known to indulge in becoming overweight). And finally, since obesity (despite our decision to blame it on personal failings) is largely determined by genetic predisposition, our success in dehumanizing the obese will give us a useful tool which we can later employ to withhold healthcare expenditures for other genetically-mediated medical conditions.

It is clear that successfully demonizing the obese is a vital pillar of Obamacare.

Now perhaps, Dear Reader, you can see why the election of Christie in New Jersey was such a potential catastrophe. It is his obesity, rather than his Republicanism, that poses such a threat to healthcare reform and thus to the Obama administration.

It was the result of the New Jersey election a year ago, and not the results of the impending mid-term election (which will merely add an exclamation point to New Jersey’s declarative statement) that changed the landscape. Clearly, the anti-obesity movement, despite concentrated, coordinated and sustained efforts to make overweight Americans feel subhuman, has failed. The election of Christie – wherein the electorate of a Democratic state has raised up to prominence a fat guy, despite the damage that does to the long-term prospects of Obamacare – was the real blow.

For if We the People (even that part of “We” who are Democrats) refuse to follow the dictates of the Central Authority as it attempts to educate us on Right Thinking, then the passage of Obamacare cannot actually represent the culmination of Progressive history. It means that the final chapter has not yet been written, and real hope remains for those of us who do not buy into the Progressive program.

And this is true whatever the results of Tuesday’s election. Thank you, New Jersey.

Podcast:

When President Obama moved into the White House in January of 2009, he found in the Oval Office a bust of Sir Winston Churchill, a gift from Great Britain to the United States during the Reagan presidency, a gift meant to symbolize the close ties between our two nations. The new President quickly decided he did not want to look at it. And, as one of the first acts of his presidency (before advancing his Stimulus Package, or pushing healthcare reform, or even inviting Andy Stern to dinner), he had that bust placed into a crate, packed with sawdust, and shipped by the afternoon mail right back to England.

DrRich can think of several reasons why it might have been a better idea, instead of beginning his reign with a completely gratuitous insult to America’s longest and best and most-needed ally, for President Obama to quietly have had the bust moved to the White House basement, where Sir Winston could have spent the next four to eight years contemplating all those other now-obsolete or embarrassing diplomatic trinkets, such as the gold plate from the Shah of Iran, and the fine old portrait of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.

And here’s one of them.

Despite the fact that President Obama was elected by a wide margin, and that he brought with him a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, and that he had loyal, powerful and dogged leaders in each chamber of Congress who completely supported his agenda, and that the major American media was largely behind him all the way, the passage of the Obamacare legislation was very hard-fought, and a very close thing. Its ultimate passage was a major victory for the President, and a great tribute to his persistence. In fact, DrRich believes that President Obama has not received nearly enough credit for the utter doggedness and persistence he displayed in the face of the terrible headwinds he sometimes encountered while passing his healthcare reform agenda.

Indeed, during this arduous process, he was almost Churchillian in his steadfastness.

So, had he kept it, President Obama might now gaze upon bust of Churchill and see not the man who had campaigned against people of color in order to keep the British Empire together, but rather, a man who, not unlike himself, had almost single-handedly saved western civilization from the forces of evil.

But there is another striking similarity between these two men, aside from the remarkable singlemindedness they displayed under pressure, which is: neither of them could have succeeded alone. Their iron will, their persistence, their personal courage, and their (too often weak-kneed) support from political allies would not have carried the day, had it not been for the assistance of a powerful, if silent, partner.

In 1940-41, when Winston Churchill stood virtually alone against the Nazi onslaught, and with dwindling resources and a badly beaten military tried to face down a powerful enemy, he utterly relied on the support – often tacit, rarely public, only occasionally material, but always firm and unwavering – of Franklin Roosevelt. And no matter how bleak things looked, Churchill always believed that, one way or another, in the end President Roosevelt and the great might of the United States would provide a way to final victory.

Similarly, when the President’s initially smooth path to healthcare reform was suddenly interrupted by a blitzkrieg of contentious town hall meetings, followed closely by the formation of the vociferously anti-Obamacare Tea Party movement, followed next by the surprising victory of Chris Christie for the governorship of New Jersey, and capped by the stunning ascension of Scott Brown to the Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy, an event that appeared to leave the prospects for healthcare reform so bleak that a week later the issue was barely raised in the State of the Union address, and that caused even the sympathetic press and some of his fellow Democrats to declare the prospects for healthcare reform to be dead, President Obama had to reach deep within himself to find the resolve for one last push. And in that dark moment he, too, was able to draw courage from the tacit, rarely public, only occasionally material, but strong and unwavering support of his own silent partner.

That silent partner, of course, was the American health insurance industry.

And as was the case with Sir Winston, in the moment of greatest crisis President Obama’s own silent partner threw itself into the fight with great abandon, and ultimately enabled a final victory.

Why the health insurance industry supported Obamacare, and how it did so, should be of more than mere casual interest to Americans. It has major implications for anyone who favors repealing Obamacare or major parts of it, or de-funding it, or declaring it unconstitutional. Anyone who is approaching the 2010 mid-term elections thinking that we can just get rid of Obamacare and go back to the way things were – or even to a substantial modification of the way things were – had better understand what just happened.

So in his next few posts, DrRich will examine the role that the American health insurance industry played in the passage of Obamacare, and what the recent behavior of that industry implies as we decide what we should – and can – do next.

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Why Big Health Insurance Supported Obamacare

Part II – Why the Health Insurance Industry Supported Obamacare

Part III – How the Health Insurance Industry Saved Obamacare

Part IV – What It Means That the Health Insurance Industry Saved Obamacare

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Now, read the whole story.

DrRich explains it all in, Fixing American Healthcare – Wonkonians, Gekkonians and the Grand Unification Theory of Healthcare.

Now on Kindle!