Much is apparently being made of Regina Benjamin, President Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General, being overweight. From the story:
[T]he full-figured African-American nominee is also under fire for being overweight in a nation where 34 percent of all Americans aged 20 and over are obese. Critics and supporters across the blogsphere have commented on photos of Benjamin’s round cheeks, saying she sends the wrong message as the public face of America’s health initiatives. But others support the 52-year-old founder and CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, citing new research that shows you cannot always judge a book by its cover when it comes to obesity…Bloggers on Salon.com speculated that Benjamin is 40 pounds overweight, perhaps a size 18. The nominee didn’t return calls from ABCNews.com, so there is no information about how much she weighs or her eating and exercise habits.
Spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services Jenny Backus issued this statement: “Dr. Benjamin is a highly qualified physician who has dedicated her life to providing care to her patients. She is a role model for all of us, and will be an outstanding surgeon general.” Even some of the most reputable names in medicine chimed in. “I think it is an issue, but then the president is said to still smoke cigarettes,” said Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicinewho is now a senior lecturer at Harvard University Medical School. “It tends to undermine her credibility.”
These critics should mind their own business. We all have our shortcomings. President Obama smokes, but that doesn’t mean he can’t advocate policies intended to reduce smoking.
If we want our Surgeon General to be a personal role model in fitness, appoint Jack Lalanne. Benjamin is to be an advocate and an educator of the public. Rather than judge our new Surgeon General by her dress size, let us instead judge her by the quality of her ideas and the excellence of her medical understanding.
July 22nd, 2009 | 11:28 am
I have struggled with obesity all my life and currently weigh over 300 pounds. The odd thing is that I’m more physically active and simply move around more than a lot of skinnier people I know. I routinely carry my 120-pound invalid mother without breaking a sweat. I also eat healthier foods (usually) than others: no pork, no mystery meat, etc. Yet many people who don’t know the slightest thing about me will judge me by my size. I have been denied jobs and promotions in the past because of my size. My opinion is that if I can do the job, then my size is none of your flippin’ business. So the Surgeon General nominee should tell her critics.
The obese are America’s new n–uh, almost said a bad word. But it’s true.
It’s hilarious that one of the quoted critics of nominee Regina Benjamin is Marcia Angell, a female doctor. Ask any employer what class of employees regularly takes off at the drop of a hat claiming sickness or family illness, and if honest, that employer will tell you it’s women in general. That seems to be the true indicator of who will cost employers the most in health care expenses and leave. I saw it myself in places I’ve worked. Others who were overweight or obese like me actually seldom took off or had medical issues. Women called in, left early, or came in late with questionable “illnesses” all the time. Pot, meet kettle.
July 22nd, 2009 | 5:03 pm
What is this with what someone “should” weigh? That’s right, it’s none of anyone else’s business. And it rings of how long someone “should” live, whether someone “should” live, etc. For God’s sake people are starving all over the world and fighting to live! Complaining about having too much too eat is obscene. As is futile care theory and the whole rest of the death culture. It’s no coincidence that both are going on at the same time, and when people want there to be less of themselves or other people, it’s a logical sequence to saying that they shouldn’t exist.
July 22nd, 2009 | 5:34 pm
And she doesn’t even look that fat. 40 pound overweight, oh, my. Not going to be able to live a full life (whatever that means), how much time do they have left anyway, they’re 90+ (how dare they have lived that long, it’s outside the norm), they’ve had a good life after all, oh my.
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