http://www.uppercasewoman.com/wastedbirthcontrol/2008/10/dear-john-mccai.html

(by Cecily, whose blogroll is where I found SP in the first place)

and

http://flotsamblog.com/2008/10/16/more-wounded-that-eloquent-im-afraid/

by Alexa. Both Cecily and Alexa have very personal reasons for being horrified by what McCain said. It’s awful.

I can’t listen to McCain or OMG the Creepiness that is Palin any more, my head will explode. And then my Ranks hat will be useless.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, we are considering accepting that women might actually be responsible enough to know whether or not they want a baby and don’t need two doctors to say they’d be driven out of their tiny fluffy minds if they went through the pregnancy in order to get an abortion:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7674361.stm

Honest to dog, we should get special hats or something.

So… I’m going to take a slightly contrary position here (not that different from Kate’s) and say that wellness does not have to equal “get rid of the fat people or deprive them of their rights.”
In fact, that’s what I think my job is right now, to remind the wellness folks of the real science of what’s known about weight loss, and to shift their focus away from weight over to things that might actually make a difference, like letting people schedule their time so they can fit in physical activity, or get the prevetative care that they need (like mamograms, paps and colon cancer screenings), or even take the radical step of asking their employees what they could do to help them manage their own health. (ducking — as I know that this isn’t how it appears to be going in many other places.)
There was actually a Health at Every Size edition of a prominent Workplace Wellness magazine, which I think you can access here:
http://www.jonrobison.net/WELCOA.html
Yes, it’s an uphill battle, but one that is worth taking on.

Also Obama, who has his faults, flat out said he recognizes a right to privacy in the Constitution, which is hugely important to me, as Griswold, not Roe, is really the fundamental case on things like abortion and allowing people to keep things like their medical history and sexual preferences private and out of government hands. Though I’m not sure how Obama reconciles rights to privacy with putting my health care records “online” which makes me uncomfortable. Anyway.

Today’s “Story in the life of a budding FA activist”: My new employer has a “wellness” requirement for the students. “Students study the components of healthful lifestyles” and then are required to take a physical activity. Add this to the list of reasons why I would never in a million years have attended the school I now teach at (gym in college? Hell no).

But during today’s faculty meeting, someone brought up the “obesity epidemic booga booga” as a reason why we shouldn’t alter the requirements. The department that oversees this wanted to remove the lecture course and require the students to take two physical activity classes instead. This guy raised an objection because of the situation in the country.

I didn’t speak up. I’ve only been here a few months, I have to have surgery in 4 weeks which has put me in a precarious position at work, and my general strategy is to keep my head down for year 1 until I get an idea for how things work. But I wanted so badly to raise my hand and point out that there IS NO OBESITY EPIDEMIC and anyone who calls her/himself an academic who buys so uncritically into a fabricated moral panic should not be teaching impressionable students. RAAAAR.

and so it goes.

DRST

Neither does telling people who to marry or forcing them to have children they don’t want. The “keep out of my business platform” has been a lie for a long time now.

I give props to Obama for making a very important philosophical move. When they were talking about about negative ads, McCain said something about Obama’s ads targeting his health care policy. So the fuck what? Obama, to my happiness, rebutted with what I had written in my notes – if he were to attack McCain, the person, it would be an ad hominem attack (against the person, not the issue) – though he obv didn’t say that. Instead, he was attacking the policy, which I think is totally appropriate.

I also commend Obama on his handling of the Ayers issue.

All in all, I still wish the ideal candidate was running (not that I’ve seen one yet), but that’s not the case. I think that Obama did a spectacular job last night.