LEGAL BRIEFS
Open Letter to a Big Fat Idiot

7/29/02 - The following letter is directed to Mr Caesar Barber of New York, who on July 24 filed a lawsuit against McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken for causing or contributing to his obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Mr Barber is represented by New York attorney Samuel Hirsch.

Dear Mr Barber,

I know you're getting a lot of bad press right now so I wanted to drop you a line to let you know that not everyone is poised against you. You'd think a nation as fat as ours would be more sympathetic to a lard-ass like yourself, but our collective talent for hypocrisy should not be overestimated. It is our national genius.

Every American has the right to be a heaping mass of jiggling lard, a right more and more of us exercise each year. It's the only exercise some of us get. I applaud your effort to find and punish the root cause of this unhealthy tendency toward tubbiness, which Nietzsche might have called our "Will to Blubber," but I believe your attorney may have misdirected you.

It seems to me that the cause of your obesity, and that of the other love-handled lumps of lard represented in your class-action lawsuit, ultimately rests not with the fast-food chains named in your suit but in your own staggering stupidity.

After all, it doesn't take a triple-digit IQ to realize that the more stuff you put into your body, the bigger you're going to get.

Millions of Americans eat junk food, but not all of them swell to pachydermal proportions. How do they do it? Some use a fork and knife instead of a shovel. Some burn off the excess calories through exercise. Others rely on liposuction or bulemia. The point is, Mr Barber, there are options.

Your attorney claims that these franchises haven't adequately warned the public that their food is fattening. All food is fattening, Mr Barber. That's why we call it food. That's why there were double chins before there were double cheeseburgers. The trick is not to eat so goddam much of it.

The proper defendants in your lawsuit aren't the purveyors of cheap, fast, convenient, and sometimes digestible junk food, but rather the folks responsible for your own mistaken ideas about its health benefits and your inability to realize, after gaining the first five or ten pounds, that something was amiss and needed fixing. I would direct your attention to your parents, peers, and school system. They have made you stupid and your stupidity has made you fat. Sue them all.

It's possible, I suppose, that you were simply born stupid, but then your parents would be all the more to blame. Sue them first.

Please reconsider your lawsuit, Mr Barber. As the sometime champion of the easily confused, I fully support any lawsuit against the fiendish forces responsible for our fettered faculties. As Herman Melville wrote, "we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

And sure, someone ought to pay for that mending.

But speaking for those of us who've found a way to enjoy the salty goodness of McDonalds French fries without giving ourselves 44-inch waists and diabetes into the bargain: don't f*ck with my fries, lard ass.

© 2002, The Moron's Almanac™