There’s another scourge even worse than racism afflicting America, ABC News reports:

Study: ‘Weight-ism’ More Widespread Than Racism

It’s illegal to discriminate against someone because of race or gender, but our culture condones a bias against people who are overweight.

There are no federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of weight, and only Michigan has such a law, according to a new study from Yale University.

As a result, the researchers contend, weight discrimination is spiraling upward, and that’s a dangerous trend that could add fuel to the obesity epidemic.

Since Barack Obama has appointed himself Understander-and-Sermonizer-in-Chief***, I expect from him a groundbreaking Lincolnesque speech about “fat-ism” any day now.

There may be a glitch, though. One of the “understanders” about fat-ism explains the tragic conditions that prevail to make the overweight feel persecuted [e.a.]:

“We send a message to citizens in our culture that this is something that is tolerated,” she said. “We live in a culture where we obviously place a premium on fitness, and fitness has come to symbolize very important values in our culture, like hard work and discipline and ambition. Unfortunately, if a person is not thin, or is overweight or obese, then they must lack self-discipline, have poor willpower, etc., and as a result they get blamed and stigmatized.”

Senator Obama may not be able to weigh in effectively on this topic. He considers certain foods too “decadent“:

At the chocolate factory, he went into the kitchen, where five white-haired women in plastic hairnets spun chocolate into a variety of shapes. He picked out a few candies for his daughters, handing them for safekeeping to aide Reggie Love.

Watching the process, he said: “Can I ask you the truth, though? Do you actually eat the chocolate or do you get sick of it?”

The workers giggled. “We make it; of course we eat it,” said Jean Hockbenerocht.

Later, at the diner, Obama was plied with a chocolate cake. “Oh man, that’s too decadent for me,” he demurred. A woman then offered him a Styrofoam container, which he opened, finding a burger, cheese fries and onion rings. Obama shrugged, took a ring, and tossed the container back.

Is Barack Obama a secret stigmatizer of fat people?

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*** Here’s what he told the ladies of The View:

The candidate explained, “Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don’t normally listen to each other to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other.”

Somewhere in my drafts folder, I have a long post about how TV in general and the big cable channels in particular are a “news-free zone,” and one day I will polish it and publish it—it’s a work in progress.

Meanwhile, as my ideas marinate, I would like to note that there’s a new ethos in Cable Land, most tellingly represented by Chris Matthews, one of the talkingest talking heads on MSNBC.

Here, courtesy of Gail Shister at TVNewser, Matthews explains how it is that he can send valentines to Barack Obama several times per hour every day on his show Hardball and yet claim that he is not endorsing Obama [e.a.]:

Matthews — dubbed “Rain Man” by Brian Williams in a Christmas staff video — is just reporting the facts, m’am.

The leg thrill “was an honest reaction to the speech,” he says. “I have no regrets. I report what happens. I report my reactions to speeches. I react emotionally and intellectually.

“People are allowed to criticize me. I want to be honest. I give an honest report of what I experience. It’s a fuller report than others have given.”

This kind of “reporting” is what’s considered important by MSNBC. You’ll note that Matthews’s feelings are issue number one—for him and his viewers.

Funny, I don’t see any news value in that metric.

Writing at HuffPo, blogger Dylan Loewe sees reasons for optimism even in the bleak picture portrayed by polls indicating that the divisiveness among Democrats is hurting them politically:

We should be less concerned with what polling tells us about today, and more concerned with what it suggests about tomorrow. Today’s atmospherics might be ripe for McCain, but there is little doubt that voter attitudes will change soon after the nomination fight is over. Come November, Barack Obama will have healed many, if not most of the wounds produced from a bloody primary battle. Sixty percent of voters still believe that Obama can unite the country, a tacit indication that voters still feel capable of coming together again. It is also likely that very few of those who claim they will abandon their party will actually do so; their responses, in many cases, are the product of the anger and frustration that grows out of fighting a long and losing battle. [e.a.]

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds links to a much less sunny post on MyDD—one that warns Dems not to underestimate the power of the Rev. Wright story on Obama’s chances of securing the presidency for the Democrats:

If we choose Obama as our nominee, we are locked-in to this narrative. There is no going back, no bogus NBC polls to save the day. No Anderson Cooper softball interviews or phony charges of racism that will rescue us.

I can’t help but note that these disparate views both come from the left.

The view from the right was established two weeks ago, back on March 20 [e.a.]:

Obama’s much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been given a rare political gift.

“It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial board, the network production people and the media into submission. Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest,” said GOP media consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the 2002 ad tying then-Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. “Not good enough.”

Although I am the farthest thing from a Republican—or a conservative—that you can imagine, I agree with Wilson.

The MSM has mostly been beaten into submission (Hillary’s embroideries about being under sniper fire have now been made equivalent, in the Gaffe Wars, of the Rev. Wright’s hihgly inconvenient anti-American rants). The soft-news outlets have been blanketed with cuddly Obama. A Pew survey reassured those who wanted reassuring that Obama had “weathered the Wright storm.”

But Barack Obama’s close 20-year-long involvement with Jeremiah Wright trumps his message of unity. You don’t have to be a Republican or a conservative or a racist or a supporter of Hillary Clinton to see that. You only have to have street smarts and/or independent judgment or an open and curious mind.

Which brings me back to something I’ve written more than once on this blog:

[I]n order to deliver politically correct votes, you need to do a lot more than kneecap people into spouting politically correct attitudes in the public square. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

I am all in favor of common courtesy in the public square. I am by nature a diplomat; I like harmony rather than disharmony. I want everybody to get along so that we can all continue to actualize our hopes and dreams and make the world a better place while we pursue our self-interest (as we are hard-wired to do).

Even a paleo like John Derbyshire, who loathes PC, understands why we have accepted it—and even welcomed it—into our post-materialist Western societies [e.a.]:

On the evidence of my own social contacts, I believe that most people born after 1970 have internalized the PC taboos and comply with them unthinkingly. Such complaints as one still hears come from the over-forties. Even they have a defeatist air. I repeat: PC has won. It is now the cant of our age.

What accounts for this victory? It won’t do to say that PC was imposed on us. We are a free people. We can be persuaded, but not easily browbeaten. If PC is now part of our everyday language, it must be because we wished it so—or at least were insufficiently passionate in wishing it not so.

We accepted PC because it appeals to the feeling, widespread in times of rapid social change, that a new decorum is called for to eliminate previous ugliness, unfairness, or unkindness. Seen from this point of view, PC is not altogether a bad thing. Every human society needs a decorum. Probably every society needs speech taboos. (I note that “taboos” appears on anthropologist Donald E. Brown’s list of “human universals.”) New social circumstances call for an overhaul of the agreed decorum, for a reformation of manners.

Which brings me back around to Obama and his Pastor Problem.

Barack Obama’s speech shifted the spotlight off the troublesome (for him) Rev. Wright and onto America’s racism problem—the source of much “previous ugliness, unfairness [and] unkindness,” to quote Derbyshire. It was a masterly stroke of political prowess on Obama’s part, and he succeeded in mau-mauing most of the media elite with what was in fact an effective speech.

But it was off-topic.

Furthermore, what works on the media elite—namely, mau-mauing— doesn’t necessarily work on the public and thus doesn’t translate into votes.

We’ll all have to wait to find out what happens.