Sarah's Thoughts
Accuracy Matters Not, It Seems
Kat Coble takes offense at my previous post asserting that child obesity is a form of abuse. Fair enough … disagree all you want. But, don’t write falsehoods about my statements in the process.
Ms. Coble writes the following on her blog:
Sarah Moore writes this morning in praise of the British government’s attempts to take custody of a fat 8 year-old from his parents.
She must be reading between some lines that don’t exist on my post. Where is this supposed praise? My focus is on frustration with the parents, not the actions of the government. Sometimes children do need to be taken out of dangerous home situations, but that was not the argument I made in my post. I dole out my praise very carefully … don’t assign such an action to me when it doesn’t exist.
Bottom line is that attitudes like Sarah Moore’s–of seeing fat parents with their fat kids in McDonalds and being disgusted–bug the krep out of me in a big way. It’s prejudice cloaked in moral superiority.
I did not write that I was disgusted, and I would never use such a word to describe the situation. I wrote that it makes me sad, and that’s the truth. Do not change my emotions for me. Being sad and being disgusted are two very different things.
It’s not an issue of prejudice. It’s concern for the welfare of a child. I am libertarian as far as adults are concerned. If you are over eighteen, do whatever you want to your body as long as you don’t harm others in the process. But, children shouldn’t have to deal with the poor decisions made by their parents. That’s why I favor seatbelt laws for children only … they aren’t old enough to make that decision. Same thing goes for food. and physical fitness.
I’m sorry that Ms. Coble gets so upset that I have concern for the health of a child.
UPDATE: Now Aunt B over at “Tiny Cat Pants” gets in on misinterpreting what I write. She offers the following:
Sarah Moore acts like a dink. Coble calls her on it. And Sarah Moore makes it worse.
Keep an eye out for the meat of Moore’s argument, which seems to be “Fat people don’t make me feel disgusted; they make me feel sad. See, that’s totally different. I’m not hostile; I’m patronizing. And it’s okay to be patronizing; it shows you care.”
Wrong. I could care less if an adult is overweight. An adult who has some extra poundage evokes no feelings of sadness in me whatsoever. In some cases this weight is a choice, in others it’s not. Not my concern either way. I am specifically referring to children who have no choice in their diet and are being fed crap on a regular basis. That is not patronizing — I just can’t imagine not feeling concern for every kid on this planet.
Perhaps if I had used the word “f***” in its various forms throughout my post, Aunt B would be more likely to understand what I wrote and wouldn’t jump to wrong conclusions.
February 27th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
I’m sorry that Ms. Coble gets so upset that I have concern for the health of a child.
I do. When it is NOT YOUR CHILD.
That’s the thing here. What would happen if our society was a little bit different and female circumcision was considered “healthy”, and a bunch of us then decided that it wasn’t healthy for you to have an intact daughter so we moaned and kvetched about how sad we were about the way you raised your daughter? You’d be ticked off, I imagine.
You claim to be a libertarian as far as adults are concerned. But you make a lie of that statement when you then question the way those adults rear their children. You can’t say an adult has right to personal congress and then claim societal rights to that adult’s offspring.
Here you talk about your concern for the health of some random children you’ve not met as some type of abstract emotion that doesn’t encroach upon your fundamental libertarianism. Yet in the comments over at NiT you bring up the same tired line about Obesity being a “very real health problem” and claim that my hyperbolic refutations ignore “the health crisis in this country is something that will affect all of us more and more in the years to come.”
You DO realise, of course, that these are the same lines used repeatedly by those in favour of nannystate interventions such as soda taxation, restaurant taxation and other big-government boondoggles, right?
As I said over there–and you may have missed it–there are reams of evidence that the “health crisis” has been largely manufactured as the foundation to garner more income for cash-strapped state and federal governments. We’ve drained all we can out of Big Tobacco settlements, so just in time it seems the CDC was brought to bear on the New Health Crisis. The junk science behind the Obesity Health Crisis has been refuted on a grand scale. Yet people still accept it as a party line. You appear to be doing so here.
As far as the original post goes, I suppose I was making some grand assumptions. But my line of reasoning was this. You entitled that post “This Is Abuse” and then delineated the case of the boy and his parents, with further colour commentary regarding your personal definitions of abuse.
Naturally I would assume that you would then be in favour of removing the child from the environment you had deemed to be abusive. Few people who look at a situation and say “This Is Abuse” mean for others to infer that they are indeed content to allow that abuse to exist in its present state. Ergo I assumed that you were all in favour of the British government’s efforts to curtail said abuse.
Of course, that’s a few steps of logic on my part that perhaps I should not have taken.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Really?? I shouldn’t have concern for the well-being of any child but my own. How sad. If I’m “morally superior” because I care about children outside of my home, then so be it.
If people want to advocate female circumsision and berate me for not mutilating my daughter, they are free to do so. They can even kvetch, if they are so inclined. Free speech is a beautiful thing.
I am a libertarian concerning adults, and I explained that in my post. Adults can make any decisions they please as long as they don’t harm others. Smoke crack in your basement all day long if you want, but then don’t get in your car and kill someone. Don’t wear your seatbelt … it’s your choice to get thrown through your windshield. Eat at McDonalds every day if you please, but don’t sue the restaurant or expect the state to pay for your hospital bills after you have a major heart attack.
It’s different where kids are concerned. Are you really telling me that you think a parent should let his kid ride in his lap in the front seat while driving on the interstate if that is what the parent chooses? Or, that a parent should be able to deny medical attention for his child who is bleeding to death because it’s against his beliefs? When it comes to a child who does not have the information and skills to make decisions regarding his own health and very life, then there does need to be some accountability on the parents.
I am blown away by your belief that this “manufactured” health crisis is just a way to impose more taxes on soda companies and restaurants. Exactly how many black helicopters were flying over your house this morning? Call me gullible if you wish, but the growing health crisis in children due to weight is not a conspiracy for revenue. Where has the problem been refuted “on a grand scale”? Let’s check back in thirty years and see how this “junk science” has played out.
I am in favor of considering the removal of a child from the situation mentioned in the original article as a possible option. Obviously, I don’t think the situation should continue without any changes. However, I do not immediately go to the government to take care of that problem. As evidenced by my post above this one, the government doesn’t do a great job of taking care of kids left in its charge. Unfortunately, we live in a society in which the government is increasingly the default institution for caregiving. What is the best answer? I honestly don’t know. But, allowing the mom to ignore her child’s medical needs certainly isn’t it.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:24 am
“Are you really telling me that you think a parent should let his kid ride in his lap in the front seat while driving on the interstate if that is what the parent chooses? Or, that a parent should be able to deny medical attention for his child who is bleeding to death because it’s against his beliefs? ”
Yes.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:39 am
“You DO realise, of course, that these are the same lines used repeatedly by those in favour of nannystate interventions such as soda taxation, restaurant taxation and other big-government boondoggles, right?”
This is exactly why ideologies are useful for offering society different ‘directions’ but governing requires the ability to balance conflicting Ideas.
You are both, to an extent, right and wrong. Ms. Coble’s quote above is exactly right. But Sarah is also corect that, in some cases, a parent’s rights do not include seriously harming a child. For example, no parent can deny a their child medical attention because that violates the child’s rights, especially the one about “theRight to Life…”
Both sides represent important values but not to the exclusion of the other. Too much libertarianism or toomuch nannying and the Freedom we all want will be lost.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
“An adult who has some extra poundage evokes no feelings of sadness in me whatsoever. In some cases this weight is a choice, in others it’s not. Not my concern either way. ”
I have news for you. It’s the same way for kids. Fat kids aren’t fat solely because they eat Ho-Hos, as your husband seems to think. There are a lot of fat kids who are genetically fat or medicationally fat. Looking at a fat child and assuming that it’s because he’s being force-fed junk food is prejudicial.
“I am specifically referring to children who have no choice in their diet and are being fed crap on a regular basis. ”
If you care so much, then by all means go ahead and start some type of non-profit organisation to provide healthy food to those children. Just don’t plan on making that the government’s job.
“I just can’t imagine not feeling concern for every kid on this planet.”
If you continue in this vein you will need some type of help down the road. No one person can possibly exist in a healthy place emotionally while feeling concern for every kid on the planet.
But while you are in this particular state of concern, might I suggest there are many other avenues to pursue. Instead of worrying about children who have parents, perhaps a better focus would be on children without parents who are starving to death. Say AIDS orphans in Africa or Islamic war orphans in Pakistan. Those places are actually ASKING for help.
February 28th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
I’m misinterpreting what you wrote? Really? Let’s address that, shall we?
You say, “I could care less if an adult is overweight. An adult who has some extra poundage evokes no feelings of sadness in me
whatsoever. In some cases this weight is a choice, in others it’s not. Not my concern either way.”
And yet, you say, “I get so sad when I see an obese kid taking in a Happy Meal at McDonalds with parents who are also usually overweight. Aren’t we supposed to live as an example to our kids? Aren’t we given the responsibility of teaching our children the behaviors that will allow them to live the best life possible?”
Let’s just follow the argument in these three sentences. You get sad when you see an obese kid eating at McDonalds “with parents who are also usually overweight” (your words, not mine). So, so far you’ve said “Fat kids eating junk with their fat parents makes me sad.” But then, you don’t go on to identify with the child (which is your claim now, that you are only concerned about the child), but you identify with the parents. “Aren’t we supposed to live as an example?” Whose this “we”? Parents.
This is it, Sarah, right here where you take these parents to task for being fat, because you say it’s not a good example. You criticize these parents for being fat, for being a bad example by being fat, and then you turn around and say that you could care less if an adult is overweight.
That’s just demonstrably (as I have just shown) not true. You do care. You think fat parents set a bad example for their kids.
I could go on and reiterate Coble’s point, that you do indeed seem to be praising efforts to remove the boy from his mother–”Naturally I would assume that you would then be in favour of removing the child from the environment you had deemed to be abusive. Few people who look at a situation and say “This Is Abuse” mean for others to infer that they are indeed content to allow that abuse to exist in its present state. Ergo I assumed that you were all in favour of the British government’s efforts to curtail said abuse.”–but I think she’s said it well enough.
On another note, I thought your snark about the f-word was pretty funny, so good for you on that half of the sentence.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Kat — I know that some kids are overweight due to a medical condition. However, we don’t know that about the boy in question because his mother refuses to show up for doctor’s appointments. It is the parent’s responsibility to find out what is going on with her child.
I don’t want to make a child’s diet the government’s job. But, please, continue to believe that is what I’m advocating.
I am not getting ulcers and losing volumes of sleep over the plight of children in the world. I’m just stating that my hope for every child is that he or she grows up happy, healthy and loved. I am, in general, concerned about the reality that at least one of these three factors are too often absent.
Aunt B — As I already mentioned, I don’t trust the government to do much of anything right. So, while I agreed that the situation constitutes abuse, I am not jumping to a government solution. I don’t trust that to be any better!
I was paraphrased as stating that “Fat people make me sad.” That is just simple and silly. I do not get a tear in my eye when an overweight adult walks by. My sadness is restricted only to the children, and sometimes part of that does tie into the lessons they are learning from their parents. As you mentioned, the “we” is indeed a pronoun meant to identify the parents, and parents have children. It’s kind of an important part of the job duties. So, my focus remains on the involvement of children.
February 28th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
What about the CHILDREN!?!?!?
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