Risk of sanity, health, doesn’t seem to matter these days. Item one is the firestorm over Senator Rick Santorum’s comments on homosexuality and especially his response to the reaction his original comments engendered. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, looking hubris in the eye and not blinking, called on Santorum to resign as chairman of the Republican Senate Caucus; Gay groups called his comments hurtful and divisive. Santorum acknowledged that the original article quoted him correctly but called the story itself “misleading.” The Associated Press then released the unedited interview.
Surprise, surprise, surprise, as my old pal Gomer used to say, the AP actually published a less damaging article from the interview than they could have and Santorum (hey, Karl, where did this guy come from?) simply made it worse. Here’s a representative quote from the unedited tapes: “I have no problem with homosexuality, I have a problem with homosexual acts.” Is this going to be Trent Lott all over again?
Item two comes out of the Land of the Lobbyists. The World Health Organization is apparently about to release a report called “Diet, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases” and the US Sugar Association, a group of the 22 major manufacturers, is up in arms. Seriously! They even wrote a letter to WHO’s director threatening the organization if the report came out unedited: “We will exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature of the [report],” the letter stated. All because the draft now circulating recommends that people get no more than 10 percent of their daily calories from added sugars.
The group is now threatening to push Congress to eliminate the $400 million we contribute to WHO. Are these people greedy fucks, or just nuts? Haven’t we learned yet that sugar is just this side of cigarettes when it comes to legal products that are bad for one’s health? Because America, taking the lead in another terrible trend, isn’t besieged by obesity–oh wait, yes we are! Does this remind you of Chris Buckley’s novel Thank You for Smoking, because it does me.
But WHO is fighting back. Apparently, that 10 percent–far too much in my eyes–is not enough for Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and the rest of the USSA members. They want the report to give thumbs up to a diet in which up to 25% of the calories come from added sugars. These numnuts claim there is “a preponderance of recent scientific evidence” exonerating sugar as a cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hyperactivity and tooth decay. Oh yeah, sure, and my name is Joe McCarthy, senator from Wisconsin, and I can name 57 communists working in the State Department.
Update, 5:00: Study says fat causes 90,000 U.S. cancer deaths every year and guess where all those pounds came from!
BillSaysThis 