Sarah Palin & Dessert, or Let Them Eat Cake

Sarah Palin wants the government to stay the hell out of our business. Especially when it comes to nutrition. On her TV program, a strange reality type program, she took a shot at Michelle Obama’s efforts to curb childhood obesity by saying something to the effect of “Michelle Obama doesn’t think you should have dessert”. First of all, that is factually inaccurate. She said children shouldn’t have dessert with every meal. That’s an important distinction. Secondly, her arguments for why the government shouldn’t be in charge with nutrition are a little odd.

GIMME SOME CAKE!!!!!!!

The idea I hear espoused all the time is LET THE PARENTS DECIDE what their children eat. That sounds good when you say it, I’ll concede that. A big helpin’ of American freedom; covered in bacon and cheese, no doubt. However, how would that be implemented? No one has yet to give us their plan... at least I haven’t heard any plan put forward. How would parents do this? From their iPhones? I know when I was in school, my parents sometimes, though rarely, decided what I ate for the day by forgetting to give me any money for food. But wait, aren’t these parents the ones stuffing their children with food and allowing them to sit in front of the TV all day anyway? It’s certainly not the schools. It’s almost impossible to overeat in a school lunch room. Theoretically, you COULD spend all your money and buy 10 bags of chips, flushing it all down with five Mountain Dews everyday if you felt so inclined. I’m not sure who would actually do that, though. If these people are fattening up their children like livestock in the first place why would they be the the best people to consult about what their children eat at school?

This seems to me another paranoid attempt by the right to portray the government as some sort of invader of your personal freedoms. Let me temper that by saying that I do believe the government sometimes DOES invade our personal freedoms: the PATRIOT act, the TSA crotch grabbing scandal, and, of course, the ever-growing fight on Net Neutrality, copyright issues, etc. There’s a difference between REAL government overreach and paranoid, Glenn Beck-style government overreach. Here’s how you tell the difference: if anyone disparages the government and, at any point, calls our current President a socialist or a “commie”, odds are they don’t have much useful to add to the debate.