Being the healthiest corpse the mortician has seen

“They speak of my drinking but never consider my thirst.” — Winston Churchill

In 1976 he was a rambunctious graduating senior at Albuquerque High when he took my English class. Recently I was thrilled to see him — until he blurted, “Boy, you got fat.” Then, “I bet government health care makes you lose 100 pounds.” Excuse me, returning to my high school weight would only be sixty pounds.

My nickname was “Slim” in high school. I was on swim teams a number of years and went to NMSU because of swim coach Dave Stacey, but I suffered a career-ending injury. Now when one of the old gang calls me “Slim” it is just a juvenile sense of humor.

Would I like to be back at my swimming team weight? Yes, but only on my own terms. With this health-care reform debate, the government is set to take that decision out of my hands. It is somewhere in the actual language or intent of the more than 2,000 pages. No one has read every page. During WWII, Winston Churchill quipped, “This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.”

Even if I do not spot exactly the specific language, I know what the health-care bill means. It is like the story of a man who went to vote years ago in Georgia. Locals kept “undesirables” from voting with a “literacy test” that was actually a mixture of Latin and Greek. They looked smugly at the man and asked if he knew what it meant. He said he did. They were incredulous. He said resignedly, “It means I do not get to vote.”

Back to what is weighing upon me. With the Thanksgiving celebration this week, what are the chances that when I sit down to the feast with my loved ones and friends I will just have a few bites of the tofu turkey and then jump on my treadmill for the rest of the holiday? Slim. Am I a typical American? Yep.

Those gazelle-like exercisers among us will tisk-tisk at me as they spend hours each day in the gerbil wheel of their choice. Then, after a three-hour workout, they eat a 231-calorie meal that will eventually make them the healthiest corpse the mortician has ever seen.

The right to be fat

The health-care bill will be passed because both political parties live to control lives. To hold down costs the government will be forced to force me to become slim, healthy and smart. My first thought was, “Lots of luck.”

My government and I part ways when government minders try to force me to lose weight in the name of saving money for the society. They will have the ability to control what I eat and how much I exercise each day. I will not worry about trying to live to be 100 because eating like the government wants me to will make me feel like I have lived forever.

The core question is: Do Americans have a right to be fat? Do they have a right to pilot the couch all weekend while smoking and drinking adult beverages? In short, do Americans have a right of gluttony and slothfulness? I hate to be on the side of gluttony and slothfulness, but I believe having government minders deciding what is best for each of us is wrong. We have the right of self-destiny even when making mistakes. We have the right to be fat, dumb and happy.

More importantly, since we are a nation with a constitution, I wonder if the health-care reform bill is even constitutional. Going back to the thoughts of our country’s founders I see no intention to deprive anyone of the benefit of their own stupidity. In fact, if those writers of our constitution were not already dead, this health-care reform debate would kill them.

We should enjoy this Thanksgiving because when the government wheedles itself into more and more power over you in the name of making your life better, Thanksgiving may become a few bites of tofu turkey and lots of time on treadmills. Stand by for when the government health-care minders fat-test each of us before every meal.

Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.

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