Today, MSNBC's Willie Geist asked what
seemed like a rhetorical question during Morning Joe: "Who is against
giving children good food for lunch?" While some of his co-hosts laughed at the
idea that anyone could be against such a thing, there is, in fact, a major media
outlet that has loudly opposed healthy food and exercise initiatives for
children: Fox News.
Geist's question came during an
interview with Share Our Strength (SOS) founder and CEO Bill Shore and actor
Jeff Bridges, who were on Morning Joe to promote SOS's No Kid Hungry
campaign. After playing a clip of Jon Stewart mocking Congress' decision to
allow schools to count pizza as a vegetable, the co-hosts
discussed SOS's successes and struggles in trying to get healthier food into
school lunch and breakfast programs. That's when this exchange
happened:
GEIST: So when you go out there, Jeff,
let's say you go up to Washington, and I mean this as a serious question, who is
against giving children good food for lunch? I mean that.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI (co-host): Well, the
clip that we --
GEIST: We laugh at the Jon Stewart
clip. But are there people, when you say, we need to get fruits and vegetables,
they say, no, no, we're sticking with the frozen pizza. I'm backed by the pizza
industry. How does it work? Who's against this?
Bridges responded by saying, in part,
that "hunger is so connected with poverty. And ... poverty, you know, when you
start to deal with that, everybody has different opinions," then concluded: "But
you're right. When you talk about feeding kids ... it's a
no-brainer."
Watch:
Geist and Brzezinski don't need to look
as far as the pizza industry to find an outspoken opponent of SOS's work getting
kids healthier food. They only need to look to neighboring cable channel Fox
News.
Fox has long attacked any government
initiative to promote either healthier eating or exercise for children. In May
2010, after a White House task force released a report on voluntary measures to
combat childhood obesity, Fox News responded by airing a promotion for Sean Hannity's show that stated: "No soda. No
snacks. No choice? How the first lady's task force on childhood obesity is
cutting into our diets and our rights."
In September 2010, Fox News figures bashed Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative, which aims
to reduce childhood obesity through promoting healthier eating and exercise.
Hannity claimed on his show that the first lady was "taking the nanny state to a
new level," while Fox Business host John Stossel wrote in a blog post: "If the
government is allowed to dictate our diet, what's next? Do they start deciding
who we'll marry, where we'll work?" Fox Nation even linked to a CNS News article
with the headline, "First Lady Targets Freedom Fries."
Fox News figures also drummed up phony
outrage over a supposed government plan to "ban
bake sales at schools" after the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids
Act last December. Even though there was no such ban, Fox & Friends
repeatedly claimed that the act could ban bake sales -- even after their guests
corrected them.
And in March this year, Fox News
contributor Laura Ingraham attacked Michelle Obama for combining the annual
White House Easter Egg Roll with her "Let's Move" initiative, bizarrely
suggesting that it was somehow sacrilegious for the event to have a secular
theme. The event is, in fact, secular, and routinely has a secondary theme -- in
2008, the Bush administration chose "ocean conservation" -- but Ingraham chose
not to mention that and instead was enraged that children would be encouraged to
"Get Up and Go."
But it's not just "government
overreach" that Fox News is against -- they've attacked private companies'
efforts to make food healthier, too. In July, the Fox & Friends
co-hosts were spitting mad over McDonald's announcement that it will shrink the Happy Meal's
portion of fries and include a fruit or vegetable with every meal. The co-hosts
had this actual exchange:
STEVE DOOCY (co-host): And kids,
there's about to be no more happy in your Happy Meals. Starting today, they're
being replaced with the healthy meal.
BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Now how are
we going to sell it to the kids?
DOOCY: You can thank the fat police for
that, Brian. Sorry, Mayor McCheese.
There were no "fat police" involved --
McDonald's made that decision all on its own.
And last month, when actress Josie
Bissett came on Fox & Friends to promote her new children's books
and mentioned an upcoming book that will teach kids to cook, Doocy bizarrely asked, "They don't have to make healthy stuff,
do they?"
Fox has, on rare occasions, allowed
healthy foods to be promoted in its programming, but only through celebrities
who are on as paid spokesmen for corporations, as when Angie Harmon took to
Fox & Friends' airwaves to promote vegetable eating -- through her
advertising for Hidden Valley Ranch Adressing.
But the overwhelming majority of segments Fox runs about food
and health discourage healthy behaviors and promote unhealthy ones, from
encouraging viewers to eat too much salt to hyping Botox injections.
________________________________________________
Were it only Fox
news, it wouldn't be so strange. A number of politicians have embraced the same
view, insisting our "damned big government'' is determined to
destroy our freedoms,
one by one; ah, but that's another story, that thing about politicians. Or is
it?
Maybe
Fox and those politicians are right.
So
let's start by making car insurance and public education optional, then go on
and eliminate police departments and the IRS. After all, all four are designed
to restrict our behavior.
We're on a roll
so why stop there? Let's also get rid of the privates that interfere with our
free will. Like,
how dare McDonald's cut back on fats and add fruits and vegetables! I am
certain Herman Cain has a better plan that has no
restraints.
I see the outcome, and it's brilliant: we get
to keep
the kids at home, feed them a diet of pizza for lunch, dinner and breakfast
too, while they sit on their arses, watching Fox tv.
And,
best of all, you and I get to drive to the pickup window at Godfather Pizza
without a license, thanks to Fox and Friends..
.who, as we all know,
never overreach.
Thanks to David Allen Tree for this post.
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