Causecast

by JAMES ROCCHIO, Causecast Editor

You can bring in a physician’s note, but Michael Karolchyk does not care about your metabolic abnormality or your thyroid problem – he thinks those are excuses. His “Anti-Gym,” a premier members-only gym in Denver, Colorado, has a simple motto: No Chubbies (secondary is “Have Sex With The Lights On,” the header of their website once you click through the 18 and older user agreement). At the Anti-Gym, prospective members are given personality tests, measured and weighed, and reviewed for eligibility. They’ll end your membership if you’re not shaping up, and have a sauna restricted to members with a certain Body Mass Index (BMI). The Anti-Gym profiles the “Chubblito” (overweight children, who they have a specialized program for), and “The Bearded Ladies,” who “watch Oprah while eating cupcakes alone in the dark,” “have enough time on their chubby hands to send hysterical emails or phone calls to Anti-Gym,” and, of course, “have not had sex with the lights on in their entire life.” We’re not the first to find Michael Karolchyk. He and the IRS go way back and the media simply loves him.

Karolchyk appeared on Your World With Neil Cavuto Tuesday to talk politics. The topic was new surgeon general candidate Regina Benjamin, who Karolchyk puts at “fifty to sixty pounds overweight,” or “obese.” His point: “just because you eat dinner rolls does not make you a role model.”

Granted, Michael Karolchyk is the voice of a misogynistic white upper class no one needs to hear from, sought out for his unedited rants against fat people and women. An overweight woman being nominated as the Surgeon General, the face of American health, is a prime opportunity to watch Mr. Karolchyk make some real mistakes. His ignorance, however, is not reason enough to throw the point out. As reluctant as I am to ever be on the same team as a man who in his own commercial screams “you’ll never get a hubby if you’re a chubby” after exploding out of a refrigerator, the conflict is there.

To Americans, it matters what our elected officials look like. An out-of-shape Surgeon General who thinks you should be fit presents a clear contradiction, that has nothing to do with gender or politics. The issue is superficial, but we’re an admittedly superficial society. We don’t let our baseball players chew tobacco and Arnold Schwarzenegger won a state election.

Benjamin is without a doubt qualified for the job. Nothing about her weight impedes her knowledge of the human body or prevents her from executing the position. However, because the Secretary of Defense flew in the Air Force, the Federal Reserve Chairman has a PhD in economics, I understand the expectation of the Surgeon General to be the picture of health. Ultimately, the debate comes down to whether Benjamin is overweight from laziness and dietary disregard or if she has a congenital disorder. Obesity has only recently begun to be understood as a “disease” and genetic causes of obesity are being researched. We would never support a Surgeon General that chose to chain-smoke (Obama gets a hard enough time), but we can’t marginalize someone for factors they can’t control. Especially when they come with the approval of the President of the United States, a veritable, and not self-proclaimed (sorry, Mike) expert.

Photo by rick, flickr