Politics and Obesity: The Strange case of Tucker Carlson

Tucker who? Tucker Carlson. The talking head on cable news. Blank stare. The one with the bow tie. Oh that Tucker Carlson. Of course.

Tucker Carlson, who refers to his bow-tie as "my built in anti-adultery device" is one of two, maybe three, conservative pundints that liberals might actually like to have a beer with. In my opinion, he's one of the, oh I don't know, ten brightest talking heads in television. I like Tucker Carlson.

But Tucker, you've let me down with your latest obesity rant.

I can forgive you for a lot of things I think you're wrong about — (you gained a lot of points with last week's rant against the killing of baby seals in Canada) — but dude, you're so off the mark on this obesity thing, well, I just had to let you know about it.

As a lot of you know, the CDC recently recalculated the risk from death by obesity, which it previously said was the number two preventable cause of death and set to overtake number one, which is smoking. Now they think they made a mistake. The CDC mathematicians crunched some numbers and said, hey, we probably overstated the case, obesity is really "only" number seven.

Now let me explain something here: It's wickedly difficult to calculate the exact, perfect, mathematical relationship between obesity and death. Why? Because obese people are rarely, if ever, "just" obese. They have heart disease, they have diabetes, they have Metabolic Syndrome, they have inflammatory complications, they have arthritis for God's sake. They are typically on multiple medications. So while we know obesity is associated with a myriad of chronic illnesses including cancer, it's not always possible to say "this guy died from being fat."

In addition, we have more and more ways of treating these chronic diseases and keeping people alive, which inflates the survival rate but doesn't address quality of life issues. (My father lived his last year virtually unconscious, incontinent and miserable most of the time, but as a statistic he adds to the "longer life expectancy" numbers we keep hearing about, which are not, by the way, a measure of health at all — just a measure of technology.) So it's hard to know exactly how many people are specifically "killed" by obesity.

At the very very least, we know obesity is a significant risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and some cancers. None of which are great things to have. And all of which are killers.

So what does Tucker say about this new CDC info?

That the whole obesity thing has been overstated, and is a plot hatched against poor and unattractive people by the liberal elite Hollywood media who value being thin and attractive and are looking for a way to "stigmatize" fat people who, as it turns out, are perfectly healthy. In fact, he points to a related finding that he (wrongly) explains as "being moderately overweight actually increases life expectancy."

Tucker is hardly alone in his smug drenched glee. An organization calling itself "The Center for Consumer Freedom" has deluged the media with press releases accusing those concerned with the epidemic of obesity of being little more than food scolds, alarmists, and worse. Its website has articles like "Peta kills animals!" (Subtext: They're all hypocrites!) There are dark hints of ties between the drug companies and the scientists sounding the obesity alarm. See folks? It was all a liberal plot to take away your freedom to enjoy McDonald's! Pass the fries.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is entirely funded, incidentally, by the restaurant industry and the food companies. The head of the operation is a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

It's politics, folks.

Tucker and his pals don’t want "food police" — they don't want government intervention in our food habits, they don't want lawsuits against McDonald's, they don't want taxes on high-sugar foods, and they don't want limits on advertising. They want business as usual.

Now, look. Let me be clear: I'm not a big fan of the government telling me what to do either. But the fact remains that obesity and overweight are huge problems. They shorten life, they reduce the quality of life, and we should do everything we can to avoid them.

And to some extent this means holding Big Food responsible for the crap they sell and the way they market to kids.

But politics makes strange bedfellows, and there are no clear cut answers here. I can't stand the Center for Consumer Freedom, whose motives are as transparent as Saran Wrap, but at the same time I'll be the first to write my senator at the first scent of a bill that allows the government to interfere with my right to buy vitamins.

There's only one thing that seems really clear in this whole mess: The more responsible consumers are for their own health and choices the better.

Power to the people.

I told you politics makes strange bedfellows.