I'm just glad I don't work at McDonalds anymore...or would that even be allowed?

[wednes]

Well that haven of enlightenment, the American South, has done it again. A Mississippi representative has proposed legislation that would, get this, prevent obese people from eating in restaurants. Because Oh NOES!!! Somethink must be dOOOOOONE about all these fatties.

Don't beleive me?
HOUSE BILL NO. 282

An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state department of health; to direct the department to prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese and to provide those materials to the food establishments; to direct the department to monitor the food establishments for compliance with the provisions of this act; and for related purposes. Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of Mississippi:

SECTION 1.

(1) The provisions of this section shall apply to any food establishment that is required to obtain a permit from the State Department of Health under Section 41-3-15(4)(f), that operates primarily in an enclosed facility and that has five (5) or more seats for customers.

(2) Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

(3) The State Department of Health shall monitor the food establishments to which this section applies for compliance with the provisions of this section, and may revoke the permit of any food establishment that repeatedly violates the provisions of this section.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2008.

Whether you support fat acceptance or not, any reasonable person must beleive that this is an outrage. Not to mention, how the hell are they gonna enforce it? Some 16 year old kid at McDonalds is gonna have to tell someone they won't serve them because they're too fat? Like their jobs aren't horrible enough already. What if you work there, do you not get your free meal because you're too damn fat? What about salads? Even Weight Watchers lets you eat McDonalds if you want it. What about take out food, or delivery? What if the pizza gets here but the guy thinks I'm too fat to eat it? Oh Mississippi, how you do infuriate me.

This proposal is so absurd that I barely feel it warrants logical debate. At the same time, the government is allowed to jail me for choosing to smoke pot, why not forbid me to eat a Big Mac? After all, I'm fat. Don't I know that I'm slowly killing myself by choosing to eat food that strangers don't think I need? Don't I know that the government loves me and doesn't want me to be fat? Don't I know that they're doing this for my own good because as a fat person, I have no self control?

I could go on all day, but I won't.

And as if fat people don't have it tough enough, 5 killed in a shooting at a Lane Bryant

Comments

[groovesinorbit]

Mississippi does it again. Christ on a cracker.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

*nods*

That's why Ohio is as far south as I go.

[groovesinorbit]

Yep. Maryland's as far south as I go, and that's only because I have family there.

[princezna.livejournal.com]

This is all really fucked up. I am speechless.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

I know, the mind boggles.

[madush69.livejournal.com]

I'd be up shits creek if I lived in that state. You can bet those f...ers will never be featured on my pizza website.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

That's tellin' 'em.

[boblovesdot.livejournal.com]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, is it too late to reverse the Civil War and cut the South loose? The nation's collective IQ score would go up some.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Ha!

You'll get no argument here. I have a friend in Nashville but everyone else down there can bite me.

[hellamama.livejournal.com]

Let's not group all Southerners with the idiots that wrote that garbage. Thank you.

Fucking Outrage.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Oh, alright. ;-}

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

part of me wants this to pass. Not because I agree with it, but because I think laws like this prove how fucked up the ability to pass such laws would be.

The Lane Bryant shooting makes me a sad panda. :(

[wednes.livejournal.com]

I agree on both counts.

[misanthropoet.livejournal.com]

Delivery would be fine because whomever wrote this shite isn't concerned about fat people; he/she is concerned about having to look at fat people in a restaurant.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Or it's an excersize in shaming people he doesn't like.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Aside from the general self-righteous hatefulness of it, I am amused by the practical implementations. You know in the days of Jim Crow, there were inferior places for negroes to stay and to eat. But get this, if you travelling, an you are fat, or a member of your family is fat, you simply cannot eat in Mississippi. What percentage of families that might visit a tourist spot in Mississippi would simply have to drive around the whole damned state?

And how will the greasy you-want-ries-with-that" teenagers working there be able to enforce the "medical" definition of obesity? Visualize, for a moment, the training videos to teach fast-food workers how to tell the obese from the merely chunky. Will they have scales and measuring thingies at every eatery to checck your BMI?

Someone missed something here. The reason tobacco smoking is banned in certain public places is that the smoke directly annoys non-smokers, and makes their clothes and hair reek for the rest of the day, not because the rest of the world gives a damned about smokers' respiratory health.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about the parallel to smoking and how it merely limits an activity rather than banning the whole person.

I guess I'm still mystified that such people are even allowed to make laws in the first place. I shouldn't be by now, but I am...

[diachrony.livejournal.com]

This is just so nucking futz it leaves me gasping like a fish. I saw something about it earlier today and thought it was a joke. What, it's for real?! UNBELIEVABLE!!

It doesn't have a chance in hell of passing, I would think. I would hope.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

One would hope.

Then again we're talking about a state that only recently lifted the law allowing blacks and whites to marry. And by recently I mean within the last 10 years.

[lirrin.livejournal.com]

I saw that today. Adult human beings took time out of their lives to think that up, write it out in legal language, and submit it in front of the public. WTH?

I don't need Big Brother to tell me where I can and cannot eat. Or what I can put in my face. Uniformly applied taxes on food of little or no nutritional value, I can get behind, particularly if the tax is then channeled to some related health fund for education or health care or something. I can even get behind legislation that says "You may not sue a restaurant for making you fat, or giving you diabetes, or any other condition not directly related to the sanitation or preparation of the food."

And lemme tell ya...with as much of the country as qualifies as Obese, the LAST thing the restaurant industry wants is to lose a large percentage of their customer base, especially the portion (sadly) which probably spends a larger percentage. In this economy? Really? Riiiiight.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

It's pretty baffling. What's more, shaming people is no way to get them to do something, anything.

I guess beyond the grossness and self righteousness, I just don't see how it works toward making fat people less fat.

wow

[katharinakatt.livejournal.com]

Wow..that's amazing..ly....stupid.

It seems most of the US population would fit into that category. I don't see it being enforced if even passed. Businesses want to make money.

I guess the drive throughs will be BOOMING! heh