I listen to NPR all morning at work, and the Diane Rehm show rarely fails to entertain/edify me. I particularly admire (and, okay, LOVE) the way she firmly smacks down guests who get belligerent and try to talk over other guests who have opposing viewpoints. She kicks ass.
However, she really let me down today. The first hour of her show today was about stress and obesity, specifically if/how stress can lead to accumulation of belly fat. Her guests were all university instructors, in the areas of: (1) Physiology and Biophysics; (2) Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Neuroscience; and (3) Psychiatry; #3 is ALSO the director of research of the UCSF Obesity Center.
Some of the program was interesting in a biochemistry sense; stress DOES make the body do really weird things. But some of it, sadly, was the same old crap about fat people: at the end of the first hour, Diane asked her guests, "Will we ever get to a point where everyone wants to be slim?"
Gee, Diane, we probably won't, because I know that, as a big fat fattie, I want to be fat. I love being the object of bigotry and derision and discrimination. Why, don't you know I wake up every morning and make the decision to KEEP BEING FAT? (Which is similar to a point that Kate Harding makes about how anti-fat bigots sound an awful lot like gay-bashers: being gay/fat is, apparently, a CHOICE. Uh, yeah. Talk to Matthew Shepard about that. Oh, wait — you can't.)
Diane Rehm is normally so incisive and scary smart. I admit I'm extremely disappointed that she got this so wrong.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go KEEP BEING FAT.
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