Grey Matters: Knute Berger Tackles a Weighty Issue

Good news: If you’re fat, you can blame it on zoning. Bad news: The planet’s destruction and the healthcare crisis are your fault too.

I’m overweight. I was outed some years ago, on National Public Radio no less. While a guest on the Seattle-based national news-in-review humor show Rewind, I referred to some newsmaker (was it Drew Carey?) as a “fat guy with glasses.” Host Bill Radke interrupted me by leaning into the microphone and stage-whispering to the entire NPR audience: “Special Rewind note: Knute Berger is himself a fat guy with glasses.”

I tell you this because it’s no use keeping a secret: I was ahead of the fat curve, meaning I was fat before everyone started jumping on the obesity bandwagon. And as an overweight person, I’m rather aware of how fat is talked about in the media. It used to be that people were a little more discreet about it, but in recent times obesity has become a focal point in policy debates on health care and the environment. The message is that fat people are bankrupting the country by increasing medical costs and helping to destroy the environment with their larger carbon footprints. A recent study blamed the rise in obesity rates for helping to increase greenhouse gas emissions, because it takes more fuel to create the food and more gas to lug heavier bodies around. So now, in addition to fat folks feeling bad about how they look, they can ponder the damage they’re doing to all humankind as they devour a Dick’s Deluxe.

Even doctors are getting tired of fat people. The head of the Cleveland Clinic told The New York Times a few months ago that he’d stop hiring fat people if he could. “We should declare obesity a disease and say we’re going to help you get over it,” the doctor said. Which is lovely. It’s well known that the best way to help people get over a disease is to make them unemployable. It makes even better sense in a place like Ohio, where lime Jell-O is considered green salad.

Speaking of greens, those of the eco variety are really in a war against fat. That is, if you don’t count Seattle’s departing green Mayor Greg Nickels or greener-than-thou replacement candidate Mike McGinn, both of whom are tubby yet preach the environmental line. That line maintains that fat is exacerbated by urban sprawl. The Sierra Club used to promote wilderness and hiking; now it pushes walkable urban neighborhoods to keep us fit. King County has taken that to heart with its Healthscape program, which promotes dense development as a fat-fighting strategy. By this theory, Top Pot doughnuts don’t make you fat, but land use policy does. My favorite new excuse: “Hey, don’t blame me, it’s the zoning.”