The debate over the "fitness" of Obama's surgeon general nominee, Dr. Regina Benjamin, for office is raging.
Can the 52-year-old doctor from Alabama, easily forty pounds overweight, advance a cogent policy for our national obesity without controlling her own fork, many are asking?
Should we put a convicted drunk driver in charge of highway safety while we're at it? Michael Jackson's doctor in charge of drug enforcement?
But others say the criticism is hypocritical and sexist.
Isn't Obama himself a smoker? Doesn't his chief White House economic adviser, Larry Summers, require a reinforced chair not just for his adiposity but his narcolepsy in high level meetings? (Or was his nap, shown in a New York Times photo, a sugar coma?)
Doesn't Benjamin's weight challenge make her the perfect spokesman for conscientious eating like a certain TV talk queen?
Besides, say fat acceptance groups, who says you can't be fat and still healthy?
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