Emotional...

... Bissage.

"The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care."

Ha ha. Get it? The elephant? That's you, reader. You're fat, says Michael Pollan. And you are a big — a huuuuge — part of the problem the government needs to solve. Pollan links to a study that supposedly shows that the reason we spend twice as much on health care as Europeans is because we are so grotesquely tubby. How can the government come between you and your food?

Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

Greedy corporations are making you fat and costing the health care system money. They are so greedy that — how awful! — they are selling food cheap. Expensive food also makes you fat, of course, but it's less obvious who's making money selling expensive food and thus harder to blame the evil corporations. 

The market for prescription drugs and medical devices to manage Type 2 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control estimates will afflict one in three Americans born after 2000, is one of the brighter spots in the American economy. As things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

Oh, here are the money-mad limb-hackers Obama was warning us about. Now, what I want to know is what is so terrible about the fact that most of the health-care money is spent treating diseases? Why should healthy people be consuming a bigger portion of the money? It's a good thing that people are left alone to take care of themselves and that health care professionals are used to do the things we can't do for ourselves. Of course, it would be nice if people didn't get diseases, and maybe a lot more of us could have long, disease-free lives, with little consumption of health-care resources if only we did more prevention. But would it change anything to give people ample free sessions with professionals who tell us to do what we already know we ought to do? The doctors actually don't have a clue how to get us to stop overeating (or — as if it would help — push us into a vigorous exercise program).

Pollan gets an economic theory going. He says health insurance companies drop customers after they get diseases, but if new law prevents this and requires them to charge all customers the same rates, then, they will have a strong new interest in preserving health and, allied with government, will stimulate the creation of government programs, policies, and laws aimed at stopping us from eating so damned much.

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system — everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches — will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before....

In the same way much of the health insurance industry threw its weight behind the campaign against smoking, we can expect it to support, and perhaps even help pay for, public education efforts like New York City’s bold new ad campaign against drinking soda. At the moment, a federal campaign to discourage the consumption of sweetened soft drinks is a political nonstarter, but few things could do more to slow the rise of Type 2 diabetes among adolescents than to reduce their soda consumption, which represents 15 percent of their caloric intake.

"Bold new ad campaign"? Nicely, the NYT includes a link. Here's the ad:

It's a run-of-the-mill public service ad? What is bold about it? Picking on one product? Using tax money to pay for it? Oh, I see, it "graphically depicts globs of human fat gushing from a sideways drink bottle." I couldn't tell by looking at it. So shoving disgusting images in our face is bold. How admirably edgy of New York City. What's next? Pictures of ugly fat people slobbering over hamburgers? Something like this?



Throw all the taxpayer money you want into preventive care and raise the price on our too-cheap food. Blare nauseating ads at us. But we will still eat. We already care and we already don't want to be fat. We're not fat because corporations are greedy or because you can't get a free appointment with a nutritionist. We're fat because of the deep, innate appetite that saved our ancestors from famine and motivated them to eat whatever they could find to survive. We are here thanks to those profound desires, and life is all too easy these days. The unfortunate consequence of the beautiful amplitude of modern life is that we grow too big.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage said:

It’s funny that some people look at that ad and see “globs of human fat gushing from a sideways drink bottle.”

Not me.

I see a dog’s head with a dagger in it, a penis, and the word “sex."

Makes me want to consume alcohol, but I don’t know why.

Faking the hate.

Meet Maurice Schwenkler, the new Ashley Todd.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage:

Our young Mr. Schwenkler, a/k/a the Gangster of Love, would have done better to have spent his spare time watching reruns of "thirtysomething," learning how to be an adult.

Let's speak of the pompatous of politics.

"But seriously, in this movie there is no sex. No violence. No eye candy. No action, really, except what’s in your imagination."

"But there are ideas. Oh, how there are ideas! And there is a kind of benevolent godliness to it. And there is a way to live your life."

All I can say is just: Be sure to drink your Ovaltine®.

"THE THEATER IS ALIVE!!1!!!!!!1!!!"

The wonderful Bissage comments on the old post titled "'My Dinner with Andre,' my favorite movie, is now available as a Criterion Collection DVD":

Mrs. Bissage and I watched the Criterion release last night. We were both spellbound.

Unfortunately, houseguests arrived just as Andre started his grand surrebuttal. Crap!

Oh well. We agreed this morning we’ll watch it again later this week.

One remark, on the merits, I will hazard to make. As I’m sure you are sick of hearing, Professor, I was involved (half-assedly) in the theater back in the late-seventies/early-eighties. Well, what of it? The thing is, I watched the movie and I was astounded by how much the dialogue reminded me of actual conversations from back in the day.

“Authenticity” is not the be-all and end-all, of course, but that movie is absolutely brimming with theater-culture authenticity, at least according to my experience.

Yep. We really used to wear blindfolds and sit in a circle and listen to each other breathe and stuff like that.

THE THEATER IS ALIVE!!1!!!!!!1!!!

Ha!

And, once again, here's the link to buy the DVD.

"Recently inspired by the great Althouse, I resolved to do more with this blog."

"And I found myself wanting to see if I could post a photograph I took all by my little old self...."

"We await the President’s evidence that the nation's pediatricians are striking it rich with unnecessary tonsillectomies."

"'You come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats,' President Obama explained at Wednesday’s press conference. 'The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.' If that’s what he really thinks is wrong with U.S. health care — and with the medical profession — then ObamaCare is going to be even worse than we thought."

***

Is the government's approach to medical care going to be more solidly based on science and less focused on dollar amounts than the system we have now? Or is it the other way around? Obama impugns doctors, because, supposedly they care about money more than science, but, without evidence — and considering the rarity of tonsillectomies — he doesn't seem too well grounded in science.

And he's been presenting his program mainly as a way to save money, so he's openly admitting he's about the money, in which case, why bash doctors for being about the money (if that's what they are)? Obama talks as though he'll only deny us expensive treatments that are less effective than cheaper ones, but I'm trusting that far less than I trust my doctor.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage writes:

At this very moment, presidential aides are lining up pediatricians to invite to the White House for a beer.

Donald's Designated Driver says:

Personally, I'm glad that our President has the balls to take on Big Tonsil.

"Cool it, Fellas! When I'm done let's all get high on the ammonia fumes!!!"

I love the comments thread over at YouTube — the source of the post title.

Cripes! Like they've never seen a white funnel cloud come out of a hot blonde's house!

looks like a 70's porn movie, lol.

:-D Just love that tornado music.

Heh, that one surfer kinda looks like Nicolas Cage! I can remember that tornado (& trippy musical accompaniment) somewhat freaking me out as a child.

I never knew there was a time where a strong ammonia smell was a good thing...

Ha ha. I never knew there would be a time when the stupid things I tried to avoid would be things I would go out of my way to make everyone look at. Or — for insiders only — the things I eschewed would be things I espewed.

***

This post is inspired by the poem wonderful Bissage wrote about the sink rainbow.

"Obscene, but absolutely hilarious."

According to Right Wing News.

Okay, now I know what's right-wing hilarious. And I'm a little scared.

Especially the part that got me thinking about egg salad.

IN THE COMMENTS: The wonderful Bissage:

I can’t watch the video right now. I’m probably not the only one, so let’s see if something else might suffice:

Bill Bennett walks into an upscale D.C. nightspot and is surprised to see Pat Buchanan sitting at the bar eating an entire chicken. He watches in amazement as Mr. Buchanan tears into the hapless bird and doesn’t stop until all that remains is one chicken wing.

Mr. Bennett says, “You know, Pat, I can’t help but notice you ate that entire bird except for the right wing.”

Mr. Buchanan wipes the slobber and chicken bits from his face and says, “Well, there’s a reason for that but it has nothing to do with my right-wing political inclinations.”

And with that, the ghost of William F. Buckley appears out of thin air and kicks them both in the balls. They double over in agony and fall to the floor. Mr. Buckley sits down at the bar and orders an egg salad sandwich.

The End.

"The Althouse delinquents, unable to grasp more than one thing at a time, are convinced this has solved the question of racist language."

Lean Left thinks you're not getting it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage says:

I managed to get about one-third of the way through.

That’s exactly the kind of sophomoric and prolix crap that tempts a survey course grader to take the stack of bluebooks and simply toss them down the stairs.

Ha ha. Now, I've got to link to Daniel Solove's great old post demonstrating the down-the-stairs method of grading.

AND: Oh, look, Glenn Kenney is reacting to us:

[T]here seems to be some theory afoot that the oft-played-for-laughs deployment of racial epithets in the picture, when considered in tandem with a years-old video of England's Prince Harry, now makes it okay for one to refer to, say, one's Jewish friend as a "kike" to his face....

We've been talking about whether the film may make some people think it's okay, not that it actually makes it okay. (And, Glenn, the character's name is Thao, not Bee. Bee is the actor's first name.)

When Bill Cosby voted: "Well, I took my father's picture, I took my mother's picture and I took my brother James, he died when he was 7, I was 8..."

"And I took the three of them into the voting booth in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and I pulled the curtain and I took their pictures out and I said, 'And now we're going to vote.' And I — we only, I only voted once. But — and I did that and their pictures were out, and then I put them back into my pocket and I opened the curtain. And it, and it was wonderful."

IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy said:

When I voted I stepped into the booth and closed the curtain. Then I took out of my overcoat photos of my mother and father and my four brothers and sisters and my dog that I have in little frames and taped them to the voting machine. I came prepared with Scotch tape because I remembered last time they didn't have any shelves in that voting booth. Then I took out a couple of candles and taped them to the sides of the voting booth. Then, from another pocket of my overcoat, I took out a bento box that I stuffed with sushi and sashimi and mixed the soy sauce into the wasabi, and using chopsticks, had a little snack. Then I took out a flask of saki and took a few long swigs. Then I gazed at the pictures for a long time. I thought heavily about each member of my family as I went down the row of election choices and made my selection. Then when I was finished with my little ritual I looked at the pictures again, individually, and said to them as if they were in there with me, "You're wrong about nearly everything and although I have only an idea how you all voted I have but one vote to counteract yours, so here goes." Then I pulled the lever. Put the pictures back into my pocket, snuffed the candles, put those away too, then the flask. Then closed the bento box and left.

Bissage said:

When I voted I brought my menagerie of Star Wars figurines and wrote in Jedi Master Mace Windu.

And it, and it was wonderful.

Richard Batista, who donated a kidney and saved his wife's life and is now using that kidney as a bargaining chip in the divorce case.

The Long Island doctor would like you to know — with the help of The Daily News — what a saint he is...

He fondly recalls a visit to her room on the day after surgery.

"There was no greater feeling on this planet. As God is my witness, I felt as if I could put my arm around Jesus Christ. I was walking on a cloud."

... and what a slut she was:

"There's no deeper pain you can ever express than to be betrayed by the person you devoted your life to," Batista told reporters...

"I saved her life. But the pain is unbearable."

Batista charged his wife, Dawnell, repaid his gesture by first sleeping with her physical therapist - and then denying him access to their three kids in an increasingly bitter divorce.

This is all about money. Money and the desire to humiliate.

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some good discussion of the dynamics of marriage, and I defend my position vigorously, by I just want to highlight this silliness from Bissage:

I gave Mrs. Bissage a kidney and it came with a string attached.

No wait. That was a ureter.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: There's quite a lot of talk about a photograph of Dawnell that causes bamboobzlement.

UPDATE: Dawnell says Batista cheated on her.

"Why did I do that and write the story with the girl and the apple, because I wanted to bring happiness to people..."

"... to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world."

A world-class bullshit artist, keeping up the bullshit.

Another memoir hoax, and once again, Oprah fell for it:

["Angel at the Fence"] was the tale of Herman Rosenblat, who said he first met his wife while he was a child imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and she, disguised as a Christian farm girl, tossed apples over the camp’s fence to him....

Ms. Winfrey, who hosted Mr. Rosenblat and his wife, Roma Radzicki Rosenblat, on her show twice, called their romance “the single greatest love story” she had encountered in her 22 years on the show....

Here's the New Republic article by Gabriel Sherman that exposed the hoax:

"It's a lie. It's one big lie," says Henry Golde, 79, who was liberated with Herman from Theresienstadt, in 1945. Rosenblat "was normal," Golde adds. "I don't know what happened. Something went haywire, to tell a lie like that on national TV. It's terrible." Golde, a former New York City cab driver who now lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, says he was angry when he first read about Herman's story in the 1990s. "What the hell? I said. What the hell is he writing about?" Golde remembers....

"A love story set in a concentration camp as a way of teaching about the Holocaust actually inverts the reality of the Holocaust, denies it in its own way," [Michigan State University professor Kenneth] Waltzer wrote me in an e-mail. "The reality of being in a concentration camp was that ... [n]ormal impulses like those of young lovers were disrupted, collapsed. The idea that two people in the circumstances described--a prisoner in a camp, in a group of brothers, the primary source of loyalty, and a girl in hiding under false identity with a family group, her primary source of loyalty--would put all up for grabs by meeting daily in the open at a guarded electrified fence means that the writer didn't really understand, and the publishers and moviemaker didn't really understand either. And this is why all this is so important. There is denial of the Holocaust, this isn't that, but there is also denial of the substance or reality of the Holocaust--and this is definitely that."

IN THE COMMENTS: A little pity, from Bissage:

Mr. Rosenblat is a world-class bullshit artist?

Gee . . . I don’t know . . . that sounds kind of harsh. Anyway, he’s certainly not the only guilty party in this false-memoir scheme.

Go to the link and look at the cover of the bound proof. Was the fence really a single strand of barbed wire? Is a white dove the same thing as an angel? Was there ever a white dove at all? Is that an illustration of an apple tree that actually existed near Buchenwald?

These are stupid questions, of course.

But so too is it stupid to ask whether Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and has a reindeer with a red nose that lights his way. Stupid for anyone except children, that is.

There are those who make it their purpose in life to jealously guard the memory of the Holocaust and that’s a good thing, for the most part.

Still, a little poetic license can be a good thing too.

Does it really change the horribleness of the Holocaust to say a little girl tossed an apple over a fence?

In early drafts of "Angel at the Fence" the little girl tossed over a hot pastrami on rye and an egg cream.

The editors thought that was going too far and they were right!

And William:

Let us come together in the sunlit, upland pastures and gather cow patties. Let us pile these patties one upon another and build such a towering edifice that God in his heaven looks down upon us and says "What a pile of bullshit"...The idea that the Holocaust is the one atrocity of the past century that should be immune from evasions and myths and denial is itself a cow patty that can be used as the keystone for the arch of a lofty cathedral of bullshit.....Some addled old man packed his wounds with a poultice of bullshit. I can relate to that. We all try to invent a usable past. He tried and failed, but the attempt was not evil.

AND: Glenn Reynolds links like this:

HEH: “Another memoir hoax, and once again, Oprah fell for it.” She’s a sucker for a good life story, true or not.

The Obama angle. You know, Oprah's gullibility is no joke. She's hugely influential. Skeptoid put her first on his list of "Ten Most Wanted: Celebrities Who Promote Harmful Pseudoscience."

To her estimated total audience of 100 million, many of whom uncritically accept every word the world's wealthiest woman says, she promotes the paranormal, psychic powers, new age spiritualism, conspiracy theories, quack celebrity diets, past life regression, angels, ghosts, alternative therapies like acupuncture and homeopathy, anti-vaccination, detoxification, vitamin megadosing, and virtually everything that will distract a human being from making useful progress and informed decisions in life. Although much of what she promotes is not directly harmful, she offers no distinction between the two, leaving the gullible public increasingly and incrementally injured with virtually every episode.

When you have a giant audience, you have a giant responsibility. Maybe you don't want such a responsibility, in which case, fine, keep your mouth shut; or limit your performance to jokes or acting or whatever it is you do.

At some point, the real hoax is Oprah herself.

"I can't tell the difference between Whizzo Butter and a dead crab."

This came up...



... back here (where we talking about the contrived outrage over the "Whooper Virgins" taste test).

Of course, it was our wonderful Bissage again.

Surely, you can tell the difference between Bissage...

... and Quayle...

I hate [when people say something is just so wrong on so many levels that they can't even begin to explain why] because people that say that all the time always try to imply that they deal with multitudes of levels all the time.

But seriously – how many levels are there?

Two? Maybe three, tops?

I actually know a guy that commonly dealt with five levels, but he was from Bayonne, New Jersey.

But this idea that there are so many levels is pure post-modern, crit-studies rubbish.

It is all an urban myth that has its origins in a particular budget fight in the humanities department of an well-known Ivy League University.

... and Chip Ahoy...

The contrived outrage is ridiculous on so many levels I must put down my game of multi-dimensional chess and set aside my 3-D puzzle for the moment and stop multi-tasking this four-course luncheon while responding to this blog entry while doing laundry while simultaneously playing with my puppy to respond to this while keeping open ten other windows and holding three conversations through instant messaging and solving this crossword puzzle.

1) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the psychological level

2) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the political level

3) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the sociological level

4) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the economic level

4) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the international level

5) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the sexual level

6) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the contrivance level

Wish fulfilled.

Back here, I had this picture:



Bissage said:

That’s a nice, strong dominant leader your neighbor’s got going there.

I just consulted the Magic 8-Ball (arborist’s edition) and it said, “Split crotch unlikely.”

And that’s a fine prognosis!

I said:

Actually, it breaks up into three parts just above the top of what you see in the photo. I've often looked at that spot and thought: 1. You could sit there, 2. It would be scary. 3. Even if I wanted to sit there, it would be hard to get there. 4. No matter how long I live and how many times I look at that spot, I will never sit there.

Chip Ahoy responds: "Alternate reality. Ann in a tree."



IN THE COMMENTS: peter hoh said...

Maybe you can ask to have your ashes deposited in that spot.

Christopher Althouse Cohen said...

If you truly wanted to sit there that badly, you could find a way to sit there.

Hey, I said wish fulfilled. Yeah, maybe I could find a way to have myself hoisted up there -- about 4 stories high -- and maybe I can be overcome with vertigo and tumble out and you could have my lifeless body transmogrified into a pile of white grit which you get somebody to pile up there in the tree-crotch for the squirrels to rake their claws through. But as I said: wish fulfilled.

Lolsportz.

With a hat tip to our wonderful Bissage.

And as long as we're lol-ing, let me acknowledge the much-emailed "vortex kitteh"...


... which was nicely animated by our wonderful Chip Ahoy:

Plaxico Burress's "lifetime of pampering may end with 3-1/2 of the hardest years around."

Michael Daly wants to make Burress "a poster boy for doing hard time." Why not just make him an example of famous people getting equal treatment under the law?

Bonus questions:

1. Do you think the expression "poster boy" should be avoided when writing about an African American man?

2. Do you think "[a] Giants football player can be forgiven a certain amount of confusion regarding state lines"?

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage said...

If Mr. Burress is going to be on a poster, it should be an lolplaxico:

IM IN UR NITEKLUB


SHOOTIN MAI LEGG

Let's mix up that cocktail we call a Sarah Palin.

So remember when -- it was only last post -- I challenged you to find old posts of mine that would seem most explicable on theory that I wrote them drunk. It was because of something Ron said, not because I ever was.

Palladian said:

How about any of the ones where you explain your decision to vote for Obama?

Ron said:

If I'm going to say "Althouse, you're drunk/high/Voting for Obama/obsessed with squirrels!" I'd have to have more direct evidence than blog posts! Maybe a vlog...

Yeah, I know the vlog that the whole internet thinks shows me drunk. Apparently, it's easy to look drunk on video. Just hold a glass of wine, laugh, and say something frivolous.

... I get philosophic and morose when drunk, so I'm no fun there...

But if you announce getting drunk first and then say at time X, you'll be blogging, I bet you get Sarah Palin-like Sitemeter push!

Let's make a cocktail for you to drink first...a "Sarah Palin." On the rocks! (ice, don't ya know!)

Bissage then said something that made me say, "Some people when drunk are said to get 'tight.' Bissage, I'd say, gets Titus-y." And if you know what that means, you know why I'm not front-paging it.

But Palladian answered the call to mix up a Sarah Palin:

What would a Sarah Palin cocktail be?

1 oz Stolichnaya (because you can see Russia from her house)

1 oz Southern Comfort (to assuage the "base")

1/2 oz Jägermeister (for both the elk's blood rumor and the label)



1/2 oz Bénédictine (for that religious flavor)

dash of Vietnamese fish sauce (a nod to Alaska's fishing industry)

pour over a large quantity of ice and shake until very cold. Empty contents into a very, very expensive Baccarat crystal glass purchased with funds from the RNC. Run a MAC-brand lipstick, color "Verve", around the rim of the glass. Sling contents into the face of the first reporter you can find. Sell glass and donate proceeds to charity.

Ha ha. I'm not putting fish sauce in a drink! But, cheers!

"The perfect smackdown": "Is Barack Obama white?"

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage said:

I remember vividly the time I was carrying my books, walking to summer school, when some bullies threatened to beat me up.

I countered with the perfect smackdown: "Oh yeah? Is Gerald Ford a cocksucking little faggot?"

I spent that summer in a wheelchair.

"99.9 percent of the callers who called in to that show just talked about me like I was a dog."

"What mattered is that there was somebody out there in that audience who was listening — who needed to hear it was OK. And that was the only person I was worried about."

IN THE COMMENTS: knox said:

I suspect Althouse is contrasting this gentleman's behavior with that of gays protesting Prop 8?

Whatever, it's a nice story. A brave--and generous--thing to do, engaging with a hostile audience like that. He deserves props. No pun intended.

Bissage said:

I don’t pretend to be very sophisticated about the merits or politics of same sex marriage and I don’t intend to ever do the work it takes to get sophisticated.

And I don’t feel very strongly about the issue, one way or the other.

That said, I’m sure that if I’m ever standing in a voting booth and I’m thinking of Mr. Brown, I’m going to vote in favor of same sex marriage.

If I’m thinking of some of the more virulent characters who advocate the cause of same sex marriage, some of whom comment here at Althouse, I’ll probably vote no.

I’m sure there are enough people like me out there to make the difference; people disinclined to reward hostility.

I’m sure that makes me an ignorant bigot to some people.