Step away from the fat kids, Michelle

Seriously, back off. Under the pressure of her campaign against childhood obesity her mind appears to have been taken to a new low.

Fat children are helping to destroy the US economy?

And to think fatz are called (((((paranoid)))))

Those people who insist on going on like Martin Luther Fatz going about the nobility of the person underneath the virulent irrationality yakka yak, really need to get a grip on themselves.

Well meaning is as well meaning does. And I'm sure MO is well brought up enough by her charmant mother (and late father) to know that means its not what you do, but also how you do it that matters.

She speaks approvingly of their influence on her and her brother;

"I always felt that my father and my mother were unconditionally rooting for me. And kids need that. Looking back that played such a huge role in building confidence in me and my brother very early. Whether we succeeded or failed, we had two people who lifted us up and supported us....."

My emphasis.

Every child indeed, unlike this;

Childhood obesity is affecting your workforces too – obese children are less healthy and miss more school on average,” leading to more parental tardiness and absenteeism at businesses in their communities, she said. “When we talk about childhood obesity we are talking about the workforce you are trying to build, businesses you are trying to attract, budgets you are trying to balance everyday,” Obama said warning that businesses may be reluctant to invest and build in communities with an unhealthy future workforce.

I don't give a flying fig if hating fat children senseless cured cancer if anything good can be achieved, it can be achieved in a good way just as easily as bad one, it depends on the way your mind is cast on it.

And what about the fact that POC/ working class children are fingered as disproportionately fat? Do they really need the first lady talking things up in this way, now attacking them as drags on productivity present and future?

There is a background to this of the black/POC middle classes feeling able to say certain things using obesity as a cover for what would be given greater scrutiny otherwise-as ever with this trojan horse crusade of pointless blame.

The is complete diversity of unity on that one, doesn't it make you feel all warm inside?

It doesn't matter what people's faults may or may not be the crusade cannot help because the hatred turns into a self perpetuating momentum with it as the primary object. Other righteous things which can be achieved without it, get pushed out.

I remember when Barack Obama was campaigning and he got a bit 'down home' with a crowd of (mainly) black people, telling them in effect that they need to lay off the fried chicken if they wish to succeed in shattering the paradigm of seeing themselves only through the lens hostile/uncomprehending eyes fused onto their own.

Sorry, did I write that out loud? I meant to say, if they wish to get healthy/bourgie/ acceptable. Even if he and other feel black people need to look at their diets, he has to recognise that they and other POC/ working class people know the obesity campaign;

a) ignores and/ or denigrates them their needs such as the physical energy they use in their work.

b) has a distinctly off putting theme of cultural dissemination of certain values (assumed to be socially improving rather than a product of being and a support to being MC), no1 anorexia as a lifestyle. How would that make sense when you're always pushing yourself hard?

Yet seeks to c) demoralise any seeking to try and inch up the income/ class ladder, by diverting their time and energy into the gym, as well as making them feel lowly for not being any bit more than thin.

The narrative of "I have so much more energy since I've gone to the gym" doesn't necessarily work if you use up a lot of energy in your daily life.

I'm not against physicality, on the contrary, I come from a culture where movement is virtually an extension of speech.

I feel like you talk with your body, feeling disinclined to move-if there is no physical impediment- is like losing your voice.

Being told to keep talking when you've been shouting at the top of your lungs all day and want only to whisper or be quiet by someone whose whispered all day in an sitting around in an office who needs to shout and bawl to release a build up of nervous tension. Well, it hardly smacks of tailored or unbiased 'advice', when some need restoration others invigoration.

This doesn't go with the burn calorie frame because it doesn't recognise movement as a healer only as an energy waster. Low income folks flogging their guts out making minimum wage a living wage also disprove 'active lifestyle' shibboleths about 'being active'=healthy and slim, to the extent that they are erased as 'inactive'.

People don't even bother to check out the validity of their ASSumptions when they manage the picture is not so conforming as phobes want.

What is bad about this speech, and I sincerely hope its a blip and either her innate good sense or some adviser/factotum will pull her from the precipice, is not so much what it says, although that is enough, its that her mind is showing the signs of this obesity fighting mental implosion of reason that is so unnerving.

I'll say that because I wish to bend over backward to avoid trading in any cod mental diagnosis, but I have seen this happen time and again where any one declaring war on the adipose cell as personnified by fat people child and adult alike reaches a point where their brain turns.

Like the momentum of 'fighting fat' causes the mind to cross a mental line a kind of reductio ad absurdum descends and they can no longer see any sense worth a damn and lose all perspective that they are talking about human beings like themselves. Or in this case, like their own children.

Jamie Oliver springs to mind.

What is upsetting is it never matters how nice and well balanced the person is or how well they start off.

I say this without mirth, it is always sad to see this happen and I've never seen anyone who doesn't if they go at 'anti obesity' hard enough. I feel I need to stage an intervention here because I would not like her mind to go the way of other fat fighters as it is an insult to intelligence of any kind.