Critics light on good sense

Published 12:01 am Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Politics always manages to bring out the Frosted Flakes, but the ongoing conservative backlash against Michelle Obama’s campaign to reduce childhood obesity is half-baked and nutty. (The non-nutritious kind.)

So, it was somewhat refreshing, if pure, organic politics, to have two prominent members of the Republican Party come to the defense of the “Let’s Move” program on Tuesday. Mike Huckabee, a former and likely future presidential candidate, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie broke ranks with most of their party to speak in favor of the campaign, Dietblog.com reported.

Both Huckabee and Christie have had their own weight troubles — Huckabee once weighed 300 pounds; Christie has described himself as “portly,” according to the article. Struggling with a weight problem, however, does not predispose one to support such efforts, or even to empathize, as overweight Rush Limbaugh has loudly shown. Incredibly, actual mainstream, respected Republicans, such as Mitt Romney, have gotten on the anti-Michelle bandwagon. Is opposing an initiative that aims to get kids to exercise and eat right really the issue that challengers believe will lead to the ouster of Obama and her husband? The “arguments” against the Let’s Move campaign are as old and cruddy as a convenience store hot dog going round and round under the heat lamp.

Let’s Move isn’t telling anyone what they can and cannot eat. It’s actually the Food and Drug Administration that has that regulatory role — applied to manufacturers. And no one accuses that agency of being a “nanny” when it points out that catfish raised in China might not be the healthiest seafood choice available, or that your dog’s food is full of a deadly chemical.

Let’s Move encourages exercise, an uncontroversial prescription. Vigorous exercise was lauded by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and the George Bushes. Of course it was a different time, but John F. Kennedy wasn’t accused of being a nanny for initiating his physical fitness programs.

(Talk about a different time: The JFK presidential library website notes that after Kennedy was elected, he wrote an article for Sports Illustrated headlined “The Soft American.” No politician of any party today could get away with “offending” the majority of his/her constituents that way.)

Non-politicians can readily see that our children’s health isn’t a partisan issue. The “obesity epidemic” in our nation is called that for a reason. The Let’s Move program helps kids learn to make smart choices about food and understand the importance of exercise. It’s not about taking choices away or dictating behavior. The campaign helps children foster individual responsibility and self-reliance — a concept that all Americans happen to support, in theory.