Tommy Thompson Wants Your Love Handles

Posted on March 10, 2004

Well, it's official. Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has lost his mind. After losing a few pounds himself, he has become infused with missionary zeal to make America thinner. But instead of advocating some ideas that might actually help stem the obesity epidemic in America like having insurance companies pay for weight loss programs, giving a tax break for weight loss related activities and purchases, stopping the massive corn subsidies which creates a mountain of extra corn which is turned into the crack-like substance called high-fructose corn syrup that is used to make cheap package goods like twinkies, or taking soda machines out of elementary schools, he decides to spend our hard-earned tax dollars to make fun of fat people. Like that's going to help people lose weight!

The three new multi-cultural TV commercials, along with print, radio and billboard ads, send the message that it's really easy to lose weight just by walking on the beach or eating a few fruits and vegetables. In the first TV ad, a white male takes a pair of triangular white blobs to the lost and found at a shopping mall. "What are they?" he asks the clerk behind the counter. "Love handles," the clerk replies. "Lots of people lose them taking the stairs instead of the escalator." The clerk tosses them in a drawer, and a message fills the screen: "Take the stairs instead of the escalator. Take a small step to get healthy."

The second ad opens like a horror movie. Two Latino kids at the beach stumble over a naked belly buried in the sand. "What is it?" asks one boy. "Someone lost it walking on the beach," says the other boy. In the third ad, a portly African American couple at a supermarket runs their shopping cart over a double chin. The husband picks up the blobby chin saying, "someone lost this by snacking on fruits and vegetables."

My tax dollars paid for this? Has Tommy thought about what those ads say to the thousands of teenaged girls who are either anorexic or bulimic? Instead of driving home the message that exercising is healthy and even fun, we get the message to make fun of people's body parts that aren't perfect.

While your tax dollars pay for these ridiculous and tasteless ads, the budgets of police forces all over the U.S. are being slashed because of funding cuts in the latest federal budget. That's right, the first responders in any terrorist attack are being laid off in droves and major police departments cannot afford the right equipment. But we're paying ad firms to nag at Americans about their weight.

That makes about as much sense as Tommy Thompson's comments to the media at the beginning of the anthrax scare at the Florida offices of the Sun tabloid newspaper. Remember Thompson's explanation of why the reporter died after opening his mail filled with white powder? "Well, he went fishin' and huntin' a lot and we know that anthrax can hang out in streams...he probably drank from a stream and got anthrax."