As NewsBusters has been reporting, America's oh so tolerant media have for months been attacking New Jersey governor Chris Christie about his weight.
On Monday's "Joy Behar Show," the host asked her rather corpulent guest Michael Moore, "Do you think the country will tolerate a fat president?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOY BEHAR, HOST: Chris Christie, they’re begging him to come in. Do you think he will?
MICHAEL MOORE: I don’t know. I don’t know him personally. Should we call him up?
BEHAR: He keeps saying no.
MOORE: Let’s just call him, right now.
BEHAR: This is a terrible thing to say. Do you think the country will tolerate a fat president?
BEHAR: But, don’t you think they want someone who looks healthy?
MOORE: No, I think they like somebody that’s like them. When George Bush said, "I’m a c student" and everyone applauded.
BEHAR: Yeah!
MOORE: You know, it’s because the majority of the country are not A students, the majority are B and C sometimes D students, and so he was not making a mistake when he said that and he thought he would get a good response and he did.
Most of America looks like Michael Moore? Hardly.
As the Center for Disease Control reported in 2010:
Results from the 2007–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), using measured heights and weights, indicate that an estimated 34.2% of U.S. adults aged 20 years and over are overweight, 33.8% are obese, and 5.7% are extremely obese, as shown in Table 1. Body mass index (BMI), expressed as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared (kg/m2), is commonly used to classify overweight (BMI 25.0–29.9), obesity (BMI greater than or equal to 30.0), and extreme obesity (BMI greater than or equal to 40.0).
Not at all surprising, Moore was playing fast and loose with the facts.
About 34 percent of Americans are considered overweight. A roughly similar percentage are obese with only 5.7 percent extremely obese.
Without knowing Moore's measurements, it seems rather safe to assume he's what the CDC would consider extremely obese, and is by no means representative of what most Americans look like.
Much like this portly schlockumentarian has never met a cheeseburger he'd say no to, he's never come across a fact or statistic he isn't willing to twist to advance his agenda.
As for Behar, she shouldn't throw stones.
After all, she's hardly the poster child for the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition:
