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Bill Maher Unloads On American Society For Encouraging People To Celebrate Being Fat

   DailyWire.com
BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 24: (EXCLUSIVE ACCESS, SPECIAL RATES APPLY) Bill Maher attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.
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Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” slammed the media and society in general for effectively celebrating people for being fat, warning that the trend is a legitimate national security concern for the United States as the U.S. Military is having a harder and harder time finding candidates who can meet the physical requirements to serve.

“There’s a disturbing trend going on in America these days, rewriting science to fit ideology or just to fit what you want reality to be,” Maher said. “We’ve gone from fat acceptance to fat celebration. That’s new. That is new. To view letting yourself go as a point of pride.”

“We used to at least try and be fit and healthy, and society praised those who succeeded,” he continued. “Now, the term ‘body positivity’ is used to mean ‘I’m perfect the way I am because I’m me.’ It’s Orwellian how often ‘positivity’ is used to describe what’s not healthy. Of course you can get away with anything bad for you when you’re young. But let me ask you this: have you ever seen a fat 90-year-old? Scary, isn’t it? ‘Healthy at any weight’ is an unchallenged lie that people tell themselves so they can go on eating whatever they want, which is fine.”

Maher noted that poor diet is a leading factor in many of the top causes of mortality in the U.S., including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

“It’s literally a national security issue now,” he said. “Military recruitment is down by the most since the end of the draft because mainly 17 to 24-year-olds are too fat to fight. At some point, acceptance becomes enabling, and if you’re in any way participating in this joyful celebration of gluttony that goes on now, you have blood on your hands, full stop.”

WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT:

BILL MAHER, HBO HOST: And finally new rule, everybody should be allowed to let themselves go a couple of times a year, like now. The dog days of summer, schools out, rules out, it’s hot, vacation time. No one should have to diet on vacation — and the holidays, that’s the other, ‘Okay, I’ll let myself go’ time a year.

And who can blame us? It’s the end of the year. It’s structured around feast days. No one should feel bad about opening up the pants after Thanksgiving dinner and doing that thing where you undo the top button and try to hold it together with just the belt. That’s all fine. But not all year round. And that’s what’s kind of happened to America, letting ourselves go now as an all year round thing, doing the Thanksgiving pants thing every day.

They actually sell a business suit now with drawstring pants. I swear, I saw this in the mall, and I said to the salesman, “This is pathetic; it shows how much we’ve given up.” And he said, “No, people love it.” Of course they love it. You can have a mongoose for lunch and then give that big presentation. There’s a disturbing trend going on in America these days, rewriting science to fit ideology or just to fit what you want reality to be. We’ve gone from fat acceptance to fat celebration. That’s new. That is new. To view letting yourself go as a point of pride?

We used to at least try and be fit and healthy, and society praised those who succeeded. Now, the term “body positivity” is used to mean “I’m perfect the way I am because I’m me.” It’s Orwellian how often “positivity” is used to describe what’s not healthy. Of course you can get away with anything bad for you when you’re young. But let me ask you this: have you ever seen a fat 90-year-old? Scary, isn’t it? “Healthy at any weight” is an unchallenged lie that people tell themselves so they can go on eating whatever they want, which is fine.

I’ve done many self-destructive things, too, but no one pretended there was “positivity” in smoking. Fat activist Ted Kyle, founder of Kunshan Health, says, “The media and public needs to stop catastrophizing obesity.” Okay? A, they’re not catastrophizing it, and B, they should be because it’s a full blown catastrophe.

Poor diet is the leading cause of mortality in the United States, New York Times. Of course, we’re talking about heart disease and cancer and diabetes, but also as COVID has taught us, obesity is horrible for the immune system, which is why those numbers were off the charts during the pandemic. That’s a catastrophe. It’s literally a national security issue now. Military recruitment is down by the most since the end of the draft because mainly 17 to 24-year-olds are too fat to fight. At some point, acceptance becomes enabling, and if you’re in any way participating in this joyful celebration of gluttony that goes on now, you have blood on your hands, full stop.

You can make believe you’re fighting some great social justice battle for a besieged minority. But what you’re really doing is enabling addicts, which I thought we decided was bad. It’s not just the drawstring business suits — companies like Nike, Sports Illustrated, Victoria’s Secret, companies that are specifically about fitness nevertheless promote people who are plainly not into fitness. People like Adele face shame campaigns for losing weight. This is madness. There’s a reason the first thing your doctor does is make you step on a scale. Well, it used to be; there’s a card now that you can give your doctor and it says, “Please don’t weigh me unless it’s really medically necessary.” It’s always necessary. It’s like asking your dentist not to look at your teeth.

There’s a popular t-shirt that says, “I don’t owe no man a flat stomach.” Okay, no one said you did. You do you. But you’re not a freedom fighter because you want to keep eating donuts. USA Today actually wrote the sentence, “Science hasn’t yet figured out how to solve obesity.” And Ted Kyle concurs, saying, “We don’t know how to blunt the rise in obesity because we don’t know precisely what the factors are that are causing it.” Yes, what could it be? Dammit, this is a hard one! People say to me, “Oh, come on, Bill. People struggle with this.” Of course they do. Everything’s a struggle; life’s a struggle. But somehow, 50 years ago, this country looked entirely different. You don’t think it was a struggle for them? You think cake wasn’t delicious in 1969?

And that’s the saddest part. We can do this, I think. But by lying about it and making excuses, psychologically, it’s telling ourselves that letting ourselves go is the best we can do. And I gotta believe that as Americans, we can still do better than that.

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