March 31, 2005
'How Did It Come To This?'
"How did it come to this?" asks Mike Miliard in a Boston Phoenix article published earlier this month. "When was it decided that the dorks and the squares, the button-down mediocrities for whom a third Friday-night beer is the height of excess, would be calling the shots? Who empowered these teetotaling chumps, these jogging crypto-fascists with spotless livers and unblackened lungs, to decide where we smoke and how we drink and what we eat?"
Like so many Americans, Miliard is fed up with the teaming mass of whining activists, busybody bureaucrats, aspiring Big Brother lawmakers, and greedy trial lawyers out to restrict nearly everything we eat and drink. Upset with the knowledge that someone, somewhere is enjoying a glass of wine with a juicy steak, people like Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest continue to use junk science and push policies to take the fun out of the American diet. In light of these disturbing trends, Miliard asks:
What the [expletive deleted] is going on here? When did this country get overrun by killjoys and prudes? Aren't folks allowed to have fun anymore? Will the day soon come when each American citizen is subject to random weigh-ins? When gym memberships are handed out with our Social Security cards?
Every day Miliard's foreboding future comes a step closer to reality. While we don't have random weigh-ins quite yet, as we told you yesterday, legislators in a number of states have proposed bills to require weigh-ins for school kids -- and even teachers. And increasingly, busybody lawmakers across the country have used activist-driven "research" to pass a host of crazy laws like zoning restrictions and fat taxes to control what we eat. Read our top ten list of dumb food ideas for more examples.
