OK. So sometime within the past few weeks, the nimrod in the picture buys himself a seat on a US domestic airline. The picture is legit—taken by a flight attendant with her cellphone camera. I won’t name the airline or the itinerary of the flight.
It should have been intuitively obvious to the most casual observer in the flight lounge that El Grosso, who had purchased one ticket on a full plane, was not going to fit into one seat. Nonetheless, they let him board and left it up to the cabin crew to solve the problem. Ultimately, this waddling museum of adipose tissue was fitted into three seats with a seat belt extender connecting the window seat belt to aisle seat belt. Several other passengers gave up their seats in return for free tickets on a later flight.
This might be naught but a pathetically amusing side note to a day filled with otherwise nasty news except that the press and several airlines went on to point out that this passenger’s presence constituted a potential safety issue.
And they’re right—porkers on a plane are far more hazardous than snakes on a plane. On occasion pilots have refused to fly obese passengers expressing concern that these large, and largely immobile, heavyweights could block evacuation routes, trapping passengers with their massive bulk.
One captain refused to fly with a 600-pound paraplegic passenger he feared couldn’t be safely evacuated from the plane. Another captain reported to the FAA that two fat people in an airline’s emergency-exit row rendered the exit useless. “One of the ladies was so large that she…wouldn’t…[fit] through the emergency exit,” wrote the pilot. “I believe this to be a safety compromise.”
So what’s up here? Fat people have been flying for almost as long as there have been airplanes. Why are we just now beginning to hear stories about how someone else’s obesity can be hazardous to your health? Because the politicians and New Puritans are laying the groundwork for new ways to regulate and tax your lives.
Just as they did with smoking (first-hand and second-hand), they’ve got to create the appropriate public mindset before they hand down the inevitable taxes and regulations.
Look for more exaggerated stories like these in your favorite news source. These are real stories but are slanted to make America’s legitimate problems with obesity appear even worse than they are:
New research from the America On the Move Foundation (AOMF) claims that in the United States too many adults (about 66 percent) and children and adolescents (about 33 percent) are overweight or obese. Those figures are high, but hey, this is propaganda so unrealistic numbers are almost required.
Meanwhile, researchers from Harvard, Michigan, and the National Bureau of Economic Research project that if current trends continue 45 percent of Americans will be obese by the year 2020. That’s one decade from now! Half of us not just overweight but OBESE! Yeah, there are a lot of lardasses in our future but, before you buy this piece of propaganda, you’d better study up on the scientific definition of obese.
We smokers (and ex-smokers) can tell you where this is leading: taxes on fat and calories, outright prohibitions of certain foods, penalties, and fines for the obese. You might eventually need an ID just to get in the door of a KFC.
And if you fans of Obamacare don’t think they’ll start slipping in penalties for being overweight, you are really suckers for political bullshit.
Remember, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, these people are looking for ways to regulate your lives and squeeze more money out of you.
Right now, we’re still in the propaganda phase but the taxes and regulations on obesity, calories, and how you choose to live your life are on the way. Hey, they did it with smoking, they’re doing it with “global warming.” What makes you think they’ll leave you alone?
Enjoy being fat while it’s still free. I’m betting the tax on an 8-oz bag of Doritos will be $1.50 within five years.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:22 PM and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Wide-Body Passenger—Narrow-Body Aircraft
Back on November 21, I wrote an article about smokers and lardasses. Go ahead and review it; the article’s not that long. I’ll wait…
OK. So sometime within the past few weeks, the nimrod in the picture buys himself a seat on a US domestic airline. The picture is legit—taken by a flight attendant with her cellphone camera. I won’t name the airline or the itinerary of the flight.
This might be naught but a pathetically amusing side note to a day filled with otherwise nasty news except that the press and several airlines went on to point out that this passenger’s presence constituted a potential safety issue.
And they’re right—porkers on a plane are far more hazardous than snakes on a plane. On occasion pilots have refused to fly obese passengers expressing concern that these large, and largely immobile, heavyweights could block evacuation routes, trapping passengers with their massive bulk.
One captain refused to fly with a 600-pound paraplegic passenger he feared couldn’t be safely evacuated from the plane. Another captain reported to the FAA that two fat people in an airline’s emergency-exit row rendered the exit useless. “One of the ladies was so large that she…wouldn’t…[fit] through the emergency exit,” wrote the pilot. “I believe this to be a safety compromise.”
So what’s up here? Fat people have been flying for almost as long as there have been airplanes. Why are we just now beginning to hear stories about how someone else’s obesity can be hazardous to your health? Because the politicians and New Puritans are laying the groundwork for new ways to regulate and tax your lives.
Just as they did with smoking (first-hand and second-hand), they’ve got to create the appropriate public mindset before they hand down the inevitable taxes and regulations.
Look for more exaggerated stories like these in your favorite news source. These are real stories but are slanted to make America’s legitimate problems with obesity appear even worse than they are:
New research from the America On the Move Foundation (AOMF) claims that in the United States too many adults (about 66 percent) and children and adolescents (about 33 percent) are overweight or obese. Those figures are high, but hey, this is propaganda so unrealistic numbers are almost required.
Meanwhile, researchers from Harvard, Michigan, and the National Bureau of Economic Research project that if current trends continue 45 percent of Americans will be obese by the year 2020. That’s one decade from now! Half of us not just overweight but OBESE! Yeah, there are a lot of lardasses in our future but, before you buy this piece of propaganda, you’d better study up on the scientific definition of obese.
We smokers (and ex-smokers) can tell you where this is leading: taxes on fat and calories, outright prohibitions of certain foods, penalties, and fines for the obese. You might eventually need an ID just to get in the door of a KFC.
And if you fans of Obamacare don’t think they’ll start slipping in penalties for being overweight, you are really suckers for political bullshit.
Remember, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, these people are looking for ways to regulate your lives and squeeze more money out of you.
Right now, we’re still in the propaganda phase but the taxes and regulations on obesity, calories, and how you choose to live your life are on the way. Hey, they did it with smoking, they’re doing it with “global warming.” What makes you think they’ll leave you alone?
Enjoy being fat while it’s still free. I’m betting the tax on an 8-oz bag of Doritos will be $1.50 within five years.
Like this:
This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:22 PM and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.