Imagine walking into a branch of a fast-food restaurant with a view to buying yourself a quadruple cheeseburger and fries, only to be told by the smiling counter-assistant; “Sorry, sir, we can’t serve you that food because you’re already too fat. Have a nice diet”.
When you protest at this public humiliation you will be told (through a rictus smile) that they are only acting on their legal advice.
This is the scenario that could be coming to a town near you if a certain Mr. Caeser Barber gets his way. Mr.Barber, a resident of New York City, has launched a legal action against several world-famous fast-food restaurant chains who, he claims, have conspired to turn him into a hog-beast.
“He claims the fast food restaurants, where Barber says he used to eat four or five times a week even after suffering a heart attack, did not properly disclose the ingredients of their food and the risks of eating too much.
It is too much to hope that that is a mis-print? Even after suffering a heart-attack this human vacuum-cleaner continued shovelling cheeseburgers and fried chicken down his neck. As somebody who is engaged in a lifelong jihad against flab, I am only too aware that my waistline is entirely my own responsibility but that sort of makes me a marginal minority in an age when one’s woes are expected be laid at someone else’s doorstep.
I could wax angrily about the rank silliness and raging absurdity of this victim-culture but I’d only be treading over well-worn carpet. Besides, Mr.Barber is highly likely to win regardless of my posturings.
Those of us who are familiar with the Holy Scripture of Post-Modernism (Neurosis, Chapter 1, verse 12 – “He that provideth for me shall face a mighty reckoning for his sin”) know only too well how this will play out. Mr.Barber will sit in the Courtroom (in a reinforced chair and with some sort of drip in his arm for theatrical effect – it generally works) and blub about his ruined life. His pudgy hand will wipe away a tear as he recounts how his childhood dreams of competing in the Olympic Decathalon have been cruelly dashed by Colonel Sanders and his monstrous regiment of corporate calorie-peddlers. Mr.Barber will blub, the Judge will blub, the lawyers will blub, the jury will blub and the press reporters will blub. Everyone will have a good old blub about blubber and the good citizens of New York will do their humane duty and compensate this poor man and punish the wicked purveyors of tasty nosh who have actually profited from his misery.
And once the inevitable verdict has been delivered, the flood-gates (or should that be ‘the food-gates’) will be open for everyone who has ever popped a button off their shirt or moved up from dress size 14 to dress size 16. The money may even make it worthwhile. Hey, if you can’t be beautiful, you may as well be rich. I swear that I see a new form of prohibition on the horizon, together with a War on French Fries.
