You heard it here: Michelle Obama is right.
Get your paws off the Big Mac and don’t even look at those dang Ding Dongs. You’re fat, America. You’re obese, New York. Not chubby. Not pleasantly plump. You’re a bunch of slovenly, plus-size porkers.
An alarming statistic released last month should have shot seismic waves through the extra-wide bellies of my fellow citizens. Instead, it landed with a thud and a side of fries in the La-Z-Boy:
Fat has bounced from the suburbs of Atlanta and New Jersey, and landed with an extra-large bucket of KFC throughout the rest of the world. Today, more than one in 10 adults worldwide — more than half a billion bodies — is obese.
Western fast-food diets and lack of exercise is blamed for making more than a tenth of humans unable to see their toes. That’s causing a “tsunami of obesity that will eventually affect all regions of the world,” wrote researchers in The Lancet.
Even more mind-bending, two big-deal Republicans, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and likely presidential contender Mike Huckabee, are praising the first lady for her “Let’s Move!” anti-kid-obesity campaign.
Said Christie, “I struggled with my weight for 30 years. If a kid can avoid that, more power to them. I think the first lady is speaking out well.”
It makes me wonder — is fat a conservative issue?
The right, with the glaring exception of Mayor Bloomberg and the newly centrist White House, are the only beings who take on obesity with religious zeal. That’s a big, fat silence you hear from the left, more obsessed with the chic, but rare, affliction of anorexia nervosa.
When plus-size model Crystal Renn shrank from a Size 14 to a healthy — but not skinny — Size 8 — she was pilloried in the media and threatened by a public that saw her as the proud face of flab.
“I’ve basically failed you,” Renn wrote last month on the Ford models blog. “At this point in my life, I would have to actually have another eating disorder to live up to that expectation.”
My friend April, who’s struggled with her girth for years, was taken aback when she took off the weight. “That’s when my boyfriend broke up with me, some friends shied away,” she told me. “They said I’d changed.”
Even New York’s Fashion Week is promoting massive thighs. Last year, one show in the starving tents was geared to gals we once called “big boned.” This year, chubettes were sprinkled in with wafer-thin mannequins in a Fashion Week lingerie fest. And, as if giving in altogether, the queen of large-lady-loving retailers, J.C. Penney, is now doing boffo business in the heart of formerly svelte Manhattan.
The National Organization for Women is clear on where it stands on blubber. Christmas before last, ladies of the org picketed Ralph Lauren’s Midtown store to protest airbrushed images of super-thin models. NOW just finished celebrating National Eating Disorders Week.
“We don’t get phone calls asking, ‘Have you done anything on obesity?’ ” said spokeswoman Mai Shiozaki. “We’re not the go-to people for that.”
The emphasis on anorexia, though sexy, is silly. A mere 0.6 of the population is anorexic, according to a 2007 survey, the first of its kind. One percent has bulimia.
Anorexia is “not as prevalent, not even close” as fat, said Dr. Andre Giannakopoulos of the Center for Medical Weight Loss on Long Island. He said obesity causes “high blood pressure, high cholesterol, breathing problems, arthritis, gout, heart disease and depression — should I go on?”
In the United States, an incredible 34.4 percent of the population is obese. If you know three people, at least one will die early, or strain the medical system, with preventable illnesses. In New York, 22 percent, and climbing, are fat. But in East Harlem, Bed-Stuy or northern Staten Island, the percentage who are obese tops 30 percent. A depressing 40 percent of public-school kids wear tents to school.
The good news is that we’re not the fattest nation. That title goes to the tiny Pacific Island nation of Nauru, which has more fatties per capita than any country on earth.
Look out. We’re bound to catch up.
Janette’s flip a win for street smarts
Dreams do come true. Department of Transportation titan Janette Sadik-Khan, a k a the Psycho Bicycle Lady, has blinked.
Under pressure from this newspaper and angry folks citywide, Sadik-Khan revised plans for her biggest boondoggle to date, the 34th Street Transitway — a budding Godzilla of bus lanes and pedestrian malls set to eat Manhattan’s busiest thoroughfare next year.
On Thursday, Sadik-Khan removed from the project a pedestrian plaza that would have plunked illegally smoking tourists into lawn chairs between Herald Square and Fifth Avenue. But she hasn’t conceded defeat in her zeal to remake 34th Street into a bus-friendly, car-deprived byway. Yet.
The New York Times credited this newspaper, singling out my column last Monday, with shaming Sadik-Khan into making the change. “This is the first time I’ve seen the administration move so fast!” said a government source disgusted with the project.
There’s still time to kill it.
A-DOLT EDUCATION ISSUES
Students at Jane Addams HS in The Bronx text one another and listen to headphones all day, while barely literate teachers and administrators yawn.
At August Martin HS in Queens, “I could just go into class and sit there and still pass,” said a student. At W.H. Maxwell HS in Brooklyn, “lateness appeared to be expected, and was accepted by the staff.”
This is the terrifying verdict of reviewers from the state, which drops a bundle into these cesspools each year. Officials want to replace staff and principals or close the schools. I have one question.
Where are the parents? Does any student ever go home and get asked, “What did you do in school today?”
Commie cash machine
Rich, commie crank Michael Moore wants rich people, like him, to redistribute the wealth.
“They’re sitting on the money,” he said of the wealthy. “We’ve allowed them to take that. That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours.” Good timing! I’ll expect my check from Moore any day now.
‘Jewish’ Sheen a total hora
Just what we need. Charlie Sheen thinks he’s Jewish.
Charlie told “Access Hollywood” by phone Friday, “My mom is Jewish . . . So, I guess that would make me Jewish, and my children Jewish. And Brooke Mueller, my ex-wife, is Jewish.”
Host Billy Bush instructed Charlie to use the info to clear himself of charges that he’s an anti-Semite. “Stupid me. I just got caught sleeping,” said the out-to-lunch actor.
Next, he’ll remember he’s Haitian. That should please his BFF Sean Penn.