For most of time, plump, happy children were thought to be the picture of health. Not anymore. Not to the Culture of Death.
In their attacks on life and joy, “problems” with childhood weight are a rich source of excuses for funding. Lies and exaggerations accompany such “problems” as clouds go with rain.
No one knows how many tens of thousands of jobs are filled by highly paid people who spend much of their lives pretending to care deeply about what total strangers eat. And, no one knows how many children actually are too fat.
When we are in parks, malls, and other places where children are present, it’s obvious that there aren’t a lot of fat kids. Investigation indicates that there are only a few dozen children obese enough to sicken observers. This handful of children is bussed in for various shows and demonstrations. They do not come from normal, American families. The dozen or so portly pre-teens have had their guardianship transferred to non-governmental organizations, one of a handful of “Fat Farms” located near government and media centers. There, these bloated unfortunates are reminiscent of Hansel, caged and fattened up by a wicked witch.
When necessary, short bus or so brings them in for photo-ops. “Isn’t it awful!”, their handlers repeat to all who will listen as their charges are photographed waddling about while stuffing their faces with handfuls of whatever food is being demonized at the time.
After they’ve made whatever point they’ve been rented to make, they’re herded back on the buses. That used to be a lengthy process, slowed by the difficulty of squeezing themselves through the bus doors. They were motivated into surprisingly fast rates of loading by the frequent applications of cattle prods to their bloated posteriors. Those “tools of the trade” are disguised as canes and umbrellas. Using them is the only way their keepers can move a group of them rapidly from one “unhealthful food” photo-op to another.
One difficulty emerged when the prodded portlies would squeal in outrage when the prod was applied. Keepers quickly learned to keep a large, buttered muffin handy to plop in their mouths in that brief micro-second between the time their mouth opened in pain and the sound of porcine anguish would ordinarily emerge.
Fat Farm kids have busy schedules. Some, particularly the least photogenic, actually lose weight if they aren’t frequently force-fed, usually with a pre-masticated gruel consisting largely of pizza and chocolate eclairs. It is forced down their throats with as little ceremony as if they were Strasbourg geese. It seems cruel, until we realize what long, hard hours the porky youngsters work and how important it is that they stay bloated enough to accomplish their important missions.
Their swollen bodies have to be brought out when publicity for the funding of School Lunches, Breakfasts, and Dinners is needed. They are required to be there every time an updated “Food Pyramid” is introduced. That publicity is required every week or so, when a “new, and better” food pyramid is placed before a nation that has a seemingly endless appetite for such things.
Their most arduous work? Going to endless Congressional hearings. They often attend four or five in a single morning, hurtling from one hearing room to another on giant, reinforced gurneys. The habitually slow-moving congressional staffers have learned to avoid them like the plague, and all enjoy seeing some of the slowest plodders in history hopping out of gurneys’ way with amazing alacrity.
The hard work done by the bloated young porkers is made more difficult by their clothes. Each is required to wear clothing at least two sizes too small, so that swellings of fat protrude above and below every straining button, belt, cuff, and tie.
And, they can never show that they are tired of being accompanied by impassioned cries of , “This is the reason we need more funding!” The more sensitive among them need to be heavily drugged to keep them from rolling their eyes at the endless repetition of such pronouncements.
When a long day of being paraded before cameras and committees is finished, they’re loaded onto their buses. Their keepers return them to the endless brunch and soft mattresses they find indistinguishable from Heaven. Their trip back to their “Fat Farm” is invariably interrupted by frequent stops at fast food restaurants along the way, especially those with generous buffets, several of which have been driven into bankruptcy by their too-frequent visits.
How many children are there who qualify as “Actually Obese”? Just as there are more people working for the various Departments of Agriculture than there are actual farmers working in fields, unpublicized studies suggest that there are far more people working on the Imaginary Problem of childhood obesity than there are obese children. “It’s about the only growth industry in government.”, those seeking jobs in the business admit, even as they practice furrowing their brows to make it seem as if they actually believe in the seriousness of what they are repeating.
One lesson we may learn: When we hear someone talking about the “dangers” of childhood obesity, we’re either listening to someone on the take or to a gullible believer who wants to appear to have up-to-date concerns, the expression of which is believed to lead those around them to think they are “intellectual” and “concerned”.
On a brief theological note, Catholic Fundamentalists know that it is theoretically possible for even those utterly phony embracers of fraud, among the shallowest of souls, to be saved, but understand that it’s hard. And, we cannot help but consider that part of the difficulty they have in saving themselves may have come from above, where it could have been written directly into The Program.
It may be that The Programmer might not want to have such easily misled spirits around Him for any length of time. The very existence of such Imaginary Problems as Childhood Obesity may be a part of The Creation Program that separates wheat from chaff on the threshing floor beyond.
