Oh, for... I mean... Aw, jeeeez!

Get this. On Friday, the World Health Organization issued a report about challenging obesity.

The WHO report recommends eating more fruits and vegetables and limiting fats and salt. It also suggests governments limit food advertising aimed at children and encourage their citizens to eat healthier foods.

In other words, entirely moderate, purely mainstream, proposals.

And the Bush administration doesn't like it. In fact, William Steiger of Health and Human Services "questioned the organization's findings, said they were based on faulty science, and called for changes to the report." What was "faulty" about it, according to Steiger, was that

the WHO report did not adequately address an individual's responsibility to balance one's diet with one's physical activities, and objected to singling out specific types of foods, such as those high in fat and sugar.

"The (U.S. government) favors dietary guidance that focuses on the total diet, promotes the view that all foods can be part of a healthy and balanced diet, and supports personal responsibility to choose a diet conducive to individual energy balance, weight control and health."

Some folks have already commented that the beneficiaries of such a policy are the fast food and processed food industries, both of which regularly market meals high in fat or salt or both - and fast food is increasingly transnational.

I expect, though, that what bothers the White House more is that

[t]axes and subsidies could be used to reduce the price of healthy food and make them more attractive to consumers, the report said.

That is, it didn't just propose more brochures, handouts, and colorful food pyramid schemes, it actually suggested governments might actually do something. The fact is, one of the stumbling blocks to eating healthier is that the fresh fruits, unprocessed foods, etc., that are always recommended also cost more. I remember my mother years ago mentioning poor people being "obese and malnourished" because to stave off hunger they filled up on inexpensive, starchy foods like spaghetti. An overgeneralization, to be sure, but not without some merit: Even then, "eating healthy" was not "eating cheap." The WHO recognized this, thus the proposal to use government to make healthier foods "more attractive to consumers."

That nettles the Bushites because it puts responsibility on someone other than - more accurately, in addition to - the individual affected. That frontal assault on their narrow-minded, elitist selfishness they simply cannot and will not have. To them, it's all about "personal responsibility," all about, that is, "don't bother me with your problems."

In mid-2002, I had a lengthy email exchange with a friend in Australia in which the issue of how responsible we can be for someone else taking offense at something we said. (Don't worry, there is a connection here.) Part of my side of the conversation was this:

It's become popular in the last couple of decades to propose that we are all masters of our own feelings, that if we but choose we can pass through life unaffected by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, outrageous words, and outrageous people. But I say that idea is deeply flawed because while it celebrates the individual side of our natures it denies the social side - it denies the greater part of what we are. Human beings are not solitary creatures, we are social ones. We join spontaneously into groups, tribes, sects, societies, nations. We interact, we meet merge mingle, we bounce off each other and find each affected by the encounter. It is simply wrong - wrong in the sense of "incorrect," not in the sense of "immoral" - to deny our part in the result.

I also find it interesting (and revealing) that this notion hit its stride (at least in the US) in the 1980s, when the notion of a community responsibility for each other's welfare was also being demoted and self-interest was the order of the day. It's a philosophy that lays easily in the hands of the smug and the comfortable, who then deride calls for justice as the whining of weaklings unwilling to take responsibility for their own condition.

She, arguing that we can only be responsible for what we mean, not for how it's taken, answered that she did not "feel 'smug and comfortable' in this line of thought." So I said the comment wasn't about her.

I thought that was clear from the context, but apparently I was wrong. It was a social comment about some political forces in the US which have taken the idea of being responsible for yourself and turned it into a justification for indifference to the needs of others. For example, just a day or two ago, the US House of Representatives passed legislation making it harder for poor people to get and keep public assistance. The chief sponsor of the bill had the gall to declare it a "monument to our faith in the human spirit" because the people affected would rise to the new demands - with the (of course) unspoken corollary that those who don't or can't have only themselves to blame and deserve their fate.

Probably what we need to deal with unhealthy weight is the "miracle of salvation." Just don't expect any actual help from the Bush crew - that would be a miracle.