The case of Gayle Laverne Grinds highlights one of the most important issues of our time.
I wonder how many adverts for fatty, calorie-laden food this woman viewed during the six years she spent on the sofa in front of the television. I suppose the free marketeers would claim that exposure to these commercials had no bearing on the foods this woman consumed during her six years on the couch, and that she had the “personal responsibility” to choose not to eat them and to choose not to soil herself every day. But public health experts predict that by 2010, one person in three will die this way, and that 72 per cent of all schoolchildren will be one with sofas of their own. With increased funding for public education on the dangers of sofas and junk food, those rates could be substantially reduced. As it is, the government departments in charge of such education are criminally underfunded – and still the right-wingers and libertarians cheer on as tax cuts for the wealthy kill us and kill our kids.
The real question is this: How many innocent people have to die after spending six years on the sofa, eating unhealthy food, defecating and sitting in a mound of their own filth before we put big business in its place and tell these fast food and junk food companies that they cannot continue to run roughshod over the public?
Note: I find the case of Couchwoman desperately sad; although some of my friends cannot bring themselves to feel any sympathy for her, I cannot imagine the prisons in her mind that led to her choosing to imprison herself on that sofa. I do not think it would be wildly and outrageously speculative to guess that she may have been mentally ill. I find it desperately sad for her and for her loved ones – although one must wonder whether she had any of those.
Oh, and the statistics cited are, well, as about as truthful as the ones public health officials usually come up with.
Seven years ago my wife and I decided not to own a TV set. We don’t make a festish of it. Our son watches the Sunday morning stuff visiting his grandma. We don’t say ‘television is evil’ or anything else. We simply made a choice no different from any other, reflecting the inchoate perception that there was too much garbage on TV. But a strange thing happened. It gradually became unwatchable; on the occasions we were at friend’s I didn’t want to see it, apart from sports and cartoons. The worst of it weren’t the food ads by a long shot. It was the fakery; the incessant sexual innuendo; the buy-buy-buyness of it.
There’s a simple way to ban television ads. It’s called the off button. Because you are going to have to redact a whole lot more stuff than fast food ads to make it fit for everyone’s consumption. I’ve got no beef with those who want to watch it; simply glad I don’t. If that poor couch woman couldn’t hit the off switch, her condition was caused by something deeper than a burger outlet advertisement.
If it was not for my continuing delight in watching sporting events, I would cheerfully follow wrectchard’s lead. It is a rare day indeed that the television is on and a sporting event is not being shown.
I am with Scott, if it weren’t for Arsenal, I wouldnt watch TV on my own. My wife watches reality TV, but she is in the middle of trying to get one produced, so I understand her watching, but try not to spend too much time doing it with her. By the way, Jackie, your sarcasm mode seems rather heavy handed: are you an American expat??
Wretchard: “I’ve got no beef…”
No pun intended I’m sure.
Yes, this is a sad story, but no sadder than a billion others. Hell, my story’s not much better!
Buddha said it best: “To live is to suffer.”
PLEASE stop beating your breast and wailing about the loss of one poor soul. Sure, even we heartless libertarians feel bad for such senseless loss — we just don’t buy the dubious connection between such anecdotal incidents and socialist programs that purport to cure all of society’s ills.
Even silly, bumbling old Gerald Ford had enough sense to know that “The government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have.”
Get a backbone. (No disrespect intended, of course!)
I hear about these cases every so often and always wonder how these people get their money. Even if they are independantly wealthy, how do they let the pizza delivery in?
Can anyone think of another example in nature of such self-destructive consumption? Does this extreme development of what is becoming an endemic human malaise within Western Culture warrant a profound investigation by an international panel of specialists from a variety of disciplines such as medicine. psychiatry, psychology, biology, sociology, advertising, food manufacturing/retailing, bed desiging, waste-disposal. coffin making and pall-bearing. Your own additions to that list would be welcome. The evolutionary consequences of this trend are fascinating. Is humanity destined to grow into one large defaecating stinking blob, adhering to and becoming as one with everything it touches – extant or inert? Perhaps the surface of the planet is doomed one day to entirely comprise the rotting, seething corpse of humanity and all its works. Some might say that such an outcome is already evident and inevitable. And will observers from other planets in future aeons blame Logie Baird? We are all shitting in our own nests in one form or other. This poor woman was just the ultimate example of what it can lead to on a personal basis. Is this perhaps the end product of libertarianism? Perhaps we will have to leave it to extra-terrestrial observers to explain our brief and ignominious contribution to the Universe. Or will such beings (should they ever exist) even give a shit?
“By the way, Jackie, your sarcasm mode seems rather heavy handed: are you an American expat??”
I think Jackie’s piece catches the health-nazi tone rather well (and I speak as a Brit)
//how do they let the pizza delivery in?//
In Grinds’ case, presumably Herman Thomas. He is (almost) as much to blame as she is; without him, she would have got up out off the couch every time she was hungry.
There is definitely more to this than meets the eye – the first thing that comes to my mind is that Herman Thomas was/is a Fat Fetishist/Chubby Chaser/’Feeder.’
‘Have more pizza.’
‘No, you look fine.’
‘Yes really!’
Call me inhuman. I don’t give a damn either way. She made her choice, let her live with it. We don’t want her idiocy and sheer stupidity in the gene pool anyway.
BTW, I don’t watch TV much either, barely 2 hours a week. I have far better things to do with my time.
TWG
Another example of where voluntary adherence to a set of loose religious values can help, rather than the Government doing it. Machiavelli saw religions as being state-authorised to do work it wouldn’t/couldn’t……isn’t gluttony and greed against the Bible’s teachings? Yes, it’s tough and sad, but surely some moral teaching may say ‘hang on a minute this is getting out of hand’…
I can’t see what morals, religious or otherwise have to do with this. However it is most likely true that under capitalism a few people will eat themselves to death. Under communism and a number of related ideologies, countless millions starve to death. Take your pick.
First thing we do is mandate/regulate that all sofas be made out of materiels that the human body cannot fuse to: aluminum perhaps?
As for me, I gave up television altogether for one year and found that it broke me of the habit of switching it on at the end of the day. Now I watch rented movies or documentaries (curse that History Channel) or news and the very occasional drama. Just quitting for that one year made the habit seem especially wasteful.
Perhaps I’m just in a particularly callous mood at the moment. Whilst I agree that the event is sad, I regard it in a somewhat dispassionate way – it neither concerns me nor diminishes me. People refusing to accept the consequences of their own actions irritates me. People trying to blame objects or others for their behaviour irritates me. Couchwoman is, by definition, doing neither.
It isn’t the first time this has happened, it won’t be the last.
A more humorous take on Couchwoman.
It isn’t the first time this has happened, it won’t be the last.
Yes it seems that once a year this sort of story hits. Same lurid details and desire to impose sanctions on the enablers. I am usually struck similarly in that I am a disinterested party to the situation and would rather not have such stories come through the media. Of course society does become interested when collective dollars are used to disassemble houses, provide transport, and medical care. The ultimate case of individual liberty in deeds and collective solutions to the after effects. While the article makes light of the collective’s attempts at reconditioning, that seems to be the preferred choice than to eliminate subsidy instead. Ah well.
As for television, I watch sports and some news programs. There were a few half our shows (about 3) that I’d watch with semi-regularity, and a few classic gameshows (mindless fun after a day at work). Reality shows, crime dramas, primetime ‘news’ magazines, and wrestling and all such drek weakens me. I used to worked up about such stuff, but I just had to let it go. The masses must have their circuses in every culture in every age (apparently some get too much bread while partaking).
As for commercials, I’ve also had it advertising up to my gills. I am a staunch capitalist and free-marketer, but personally I find the avalanche of advertising mind-numbing (commercialism, in my mind, is the dumb cousin to capitalism, with one you get the other, but it is preferred to various Ministries of Kulture). It’s constant, boorish (with the rare exception), loud, insulting, process selling erections.
I believe that much of life is illusions we make for ourselves, but I prefer to construct mine from stuff other than commercial television and radio. I have a digital recorder (TIVO would be better but oh well) and simply buzz through the ads on the commercial channels. It’s quite empowering. As for music, I have a 40GB Ipod and have the lions share of my music on it and listen to it on shuffle. My favorite music, played at random and no commercials. Granted it takes an investment, but it is much more preferred than paying the toll with having my brain subjected to trash.
I haven’t yet noticed anyone bother with a free-market argument against the banning of advertising by ‘unhealthy food’ companies. Apart from a moral
argument for personal responsibility being used to defuse the call for government intervention over rising obesity, there is the argument that the undesirability of being obscenely fat will reflect itself in the market place – hence the ubiquitousness of bottled water and health foods, along with the advertising of these more healthy products. Might be interesting to get some comparative facts on what kinds and how much advertising is done for healthy and unhealthy products. I’m sure there is a lot of ‘conditioning’ for people to buy healthy products too – so we might say there isn’t even a practical need for government to intervene, let alone a moral imperative.
This kind of technical/practical argument is at least more appealing to those with a philosophical skepticism on free-will than is the personal responsibility argument (although I sympathise with this argument too).
Actually, while I’m at it I’ve noticed that invoking Popper in defence of libertarianism tends to be on the moral argument (personal responsibility) rather than the technical/practical argument about the importance of small-scale, trial-and-error government tinkering for learning if government intervention is going to effective/efficient in the first place, whether or not morally justified. Chapter ten of Popper’s Open Society is all about personal responsibility, but the main take-home message of the rest of the book is about the limits of our knowledge – so I find it a little strange that people don’t seem to invoke this line of argument more…
As for adverts on the television, all I can say is that having wathched television in both the USA and in Britain the adverts in the UK are far superior to those in the US. Often in the UK they are like little works of art, clever, ironic and humorous. TV ads in the States are patronising, moronic guff screeching out to the lowest and basest instincts. I will refrain from drawing any particular conclusions but American television is made almost unwatchable by the adverts unlike in the UK.
Paul Coulam:
“Under communism and a number of related ideologies, countless millions starve to death.”
Involuntarily. Unlike the couch woman.
A communist regime actually kills you. A capitalist one is (sometimes) indifferent to your killig yourself.
It seems indeed, that the root cause of this incident is that there is an overabundance of food (and everything else), therefore food is extremely cheap. The lefties, fond as they are of tackling “root causes”, wish indeed to remedy this situation, and bring about a little scarcity and want. They (not characteristically) usually succeed in this, if they get their policies implemented.
The problem with the “personal responsibility” arguments in this case is this:
Obesity (in the U.S., at least) has skyrocketed in the past 20 years. The numbers of children with “adult onset” diabetes something like quadrupled in a 5-year period. We have a serious public health crisis on our hands.
Are people today less personally responsible than they were 20 years ago. Probably. But why?
Biological evolution doesn’t happen that fast; people born today are no more genetically predisposed to irresponsibility than people born a generation ago. So something in our culture must have shifted which is causing people to become less self-disciplined.
TV commercials are just one of many ways in which our environment is filled with messages to buy more, eat more, and maximize our convenience and pleasure. These memes are propagated mostly by for-profit entities. It is easy to say that people should be able to resist these messages, turn off the TV (and, perhaps, avert their eyes from countless billboards?)… but what if the plain fact of the matter is that most people *are* going to be affected?
Let’s say that I make and sell a product that is guaranteed to turn 90% of its consumers into fat stupid lazy slobs. The other 10% are somehow smart and/or self-disciplined enough to avoid this fate. Can this 10% legitimately say “oh well, those 90% should have had more self-control?”
Maybe that’s an extreme example. But seriously, what percentage of the population has to get sick with Type 2 diabetes before we admit causes beyond the failures of more and more individual wills – or at least admit outside causes *of* those failures of will?
I’m not necessarily advocating a government solution. Heck, Great-Society-ism may even *be* one of the cultural causes I’m pointing my finger at. But it sure seems to me like the junk food companies and major media corporations are a big part of the problem.
Brian: clearly you do not fully understand the libertarian philosophy behind the slogan of ‘personal responsibility’, I wish I had time to answer this now – I’m off with a friend to watch Tony Benn talk before going to work. Question for other bloggers: is there anything about in Popper’s writings to suggest he would’ve supported or disagreed with Blair over Iraq?
Let’s say that I make and sell a product that is guaranteed to turn 90% of its consumers into fat stupid lazy slobs. The other 10% are somehow smart and/or self-disciplined enough to avoid this fate. Can this 10% legitimately say “oh well, those 90% should have had more self-control?”
Absolutely. They should have had more self control.
It may seem harsh on the face of it, but such behaviour is truly in the realm of personal responsibility, and ultimately, requiring the onus of personal responsibility will do far more good than all of the so-called feel good social programs ever will.
The vast majority of social programs not only abrograte the concept of personal responsibility, the insulate the subject from the consequences of their actions, guaranteeing that responsibility will not be achieved (or desired).
As for TV, it’s not a problem for those who are willing to think for themselves. I make no bones, I watch quite a bit of it (almost entirely movies). I do agree with Paul, I like the British (and european, generally) commercials over the mindless dreck here in the states. But then again, I don’t watch commercials at all.
I’m not necessarily advocating a government solution. Heck, Great-Society-ism may even *be* one of the cultural causes I’m pointing my finger at. But it sure seems to me like the junk food companies and major media corporations are a big part of the problem
Here’s my spin; life’s a bitch. If everyone was out riding bikes and eating tofu, sporting related injuries would skyrocket (bikers knee! the scourge of the 21st century), demands for more bike paths would rattle in the halls of the municipal planners, bikes would triple in price, advocates would demand ‘bikes for the poor’ programs, crashes would result, and hemorrhoid cases would take a jump up.
The issue, then, is no matter how reality is in one culture or another, negatives will always abound. That’s why the work of ‘progressives’ is never done. If people live one way, they should live another, and they will usually use Force to make it so.
For all my criticisms of advertising, I’m not sure how much of an impact it has, or is any worse than a State system of propaganda. I merely hate it from an intellectual standpoint and its bothering of me. Advertising in a modern sense has been around for well over a hundred years. It is only the last few decades that health has suffered. Maybe it has more to do with the ease of life overall, less physical labor required to work and maintain a home. Just 50 years ago a much greater percentage of the people farmed for a living. But then we had such maladies as husk (which my grandfather died of before I was born). The physical toll taken by life was much greater then. Which would we rather have? Broken bodies for a few plates of food and a small farm house, or soft, flabby bodies watching TV. It’s obvious what the average desire is.
Advertising may play a part, but it’s not nearly the sum total. Perhaps a culture of personally responsibility free from State indoctrination will leave people realizing they are ‘captain of their own ships’ and must take responsibility for themselves will change the percentages somewhat. But at the end of the day, in toto, life is a bitch then you die and no amount of group dynamic maintenance will make it different. It’s how the individual makes his or her way through, uncoerced, that makes the difference from one ‘order’ versus another.
Brian – over the last 10 years, British citizens have had authority over their own lives and decisions of how to behave leached out of them by Herr Blair and the Behaviour SS. That’s why.
Absolutely right that she had personal responsibility for her decision to get grossly obese and soil herself. I have no sympathy for this woman whatsoever.
We are all subjected to a media campaign from junk food purveyors about the pleaures of their products. However there is plenty of freely available information on how to follow a healthy diet. It is up to individuals to decide which information they choose to act on.
Before we blame the media let us remember that there are plenty of health magazines replete with stories of formerly fat people who did something about their diet. She was able to buy these long before she got stuck to the sofa. Presumably, she chose not to. Or, if she did buy them then she chose to stuff herself with junk food rather than follow follow then advice contained within: Follow a healthy diet and join a gym.
I love burger, pizza and beers but choose not to make them a mainstay of my diet. I a nothing special in this – there are millions of people who make the same decision.
This woman made some stupid decisions and suffered for them. We have all done that but she had plenty of warning – she did not balloon to 36st overnight.
Perhaps legalising drugs would reduce the number of people who turn to food for comfort.
As far as adults are concerned the state should mind its own business. It’s refreshing that so many of the commentators above are exercising their own will and turning off the tube.
I find the rhetoric employed above less convincing when applied to the young proto Couchwoman and Couchman’s currently being targeted by the junk food and candy manufacturers. Young children lack the reasoning skills required to recognise the purpose behind advertisments. They’re an advertisers dream and getting them hooked on the high sugar and calorie diet early is an excellent investment on the part of the advertisor.
In a perfect world their parents would exercise 24 hour supervision over their progeny but realists (and parents of small children) will know this is not always the case. Advertisors certainly do.
The Swedes (always popular on this site) enacted a ban on advertising targetted specifically at very young children. As someone who has made their living at various times within the TV and Advertising sectors I’d be delighted if other countries followed suit.
Once we’re old enough to make some intelligent decisions for ourselves then the nanny state can back off but in those early critical stages of development I’d be happy to see a slight curtailment on the rights and liberties of the Fast Food industry with the aim of reducing the number of people winding up like the unfortunate woman above.
This is the part that tickles me:
Something bad happened! Quick, find someone to blame!
Perhaps someone else has time to rip matt’s argument to shreds, but as I have said before: What amuses me is the notion that if these foods aren’t advertised, their existence will become a huge secret to children and everyone else, and everyone will throw up their hands, sigh, and say, “Well, McDonald’s is out of business, and Hostess stopped making Twinkies, so I guess it’s a life of celery sticks and daily jogs for me now.” The extent to which the supporters of advertising bans, fat taxes, and regulation that would require fast food places to fit doors so small that fat people couldn’t fit throught hem can delude themselves about the causes of obesity and ill health is stunning.
Also, I was recently at a birthday party for a 1-year-old, and the parents were feeding their toddlers Mini Cheddars (UK version of Cheese Nips), sugary yoghurts, cakes, white bread, etc. These were middle class parents who explained away, as if ashamed (as they should have been), that such solutions were just easy. So is the answer then to ban all packaged foods and make parents cook everything their precious babies shall eat from scratch? After all, according to people like Matt, we should think of the children – whether it makes sense or not, and whether it restricts liberty or not.
Jackie are you familiar with the term ‘straw man’? How you feel able to generalise about ‘people like me’ from my brief posting is beyond me. I don’t buy into fat taxes, food bans or any of the other baggage you seek to saddle me with.
As for the charge of ‘thinking of the children’. It makes perfect sense to do so either from a purely selfish perspective or from a more general interest in the continuation of the species. I’ll plead guilty on both counts.
We already protect children from some of the more extreme effects of the market, they make effective factory workers but few would wish a return to the days of 5 year olds scurrying under cotton looms. That temporary restriction of the freedoms of both child and potential employer doesn’t prevent the child from joining the workforce at a later date.
I certainly don’t think that preventing the advertising will magic these foods out of existence. It will delay however the planting of assumptions within the very young (and highly suggestible) concerning the desirability of consuming junk food and sweets in vast quantities. It will give parents a small window in which to educate their children about nutrition and good eating habits.
I agree with you entirely concerning the behaviour of the parents at the party you attended. They are making the choice to feed their children rubbish, purely it seems on the basis of laziness. Its an informed choice (if a poor one), unlike the one which a child makes when he/she sees a commercial extolling the wonders of sunny delight and begins pestering their parents for a product which is little more than junk.
Matt, I can say “people like you” very easily – it means people who would sacrifice liberty for the sake of some imagined benefit to “the common good”. Are you also willing to sacrifice liberty because you imagine that an absence of Sunny Delight ads will make life easier for parents who are annoyed when their children pester them? I hate to say it, but if people don’t want to be pestered, they shouldn’t have kids. If they don’t want to exercise responsibility for their children, they shouldn’t have kids. If they don’t want to exert authority over their children, they shouldn’t have kids. They should not expect freedoms to be curtailed in order to make parenting a little easier for them.
Brian wrote >
The problem with this arguement is that assumes what it is trying to prove. If it is guaranteed to turn 90 percent of consumers into blobs then they don’t have any free will.
The fact is they do smokers quit every day. Is it hard yes can they do it? Yes!
The legitimate meaning of adiction is aquired taste with withdrawel simptomes, NOT the abrogation of free will.
People do what they want to do. They drink themselves to death. Eat themselves to death. Smoke them selves to death. Etc. It is their own god damned business. That is what they want. It is their life. Let them life it as best they can. That is their right.
By the way if your product was real that efficient at turning people into blobs they would have a strongly reduced incidence of reproduction compaired to the self controlled ones. In that case biological evolution would work faster than you think.
When Vladimir Zworykin first saw his iconoscope in a working TV set, he said to his research assistants: “Congratulations, gentlemen. You seem to have invented the biggest time-waster in history.”
Whether it is gawping at TV ads that makes them do it or not, I don’t care how many morons eat themselves to death– as long as my money isn’t plundered to pay for their medical bills.
The trouble with statements like this is that they deny any possibility of individual actions having unwanted cumulative impacts.
Yes the woman should have exercised greater responsibility, but as one poster has already said she is more likely to have been mentally ill than irresponsible.
Why is it only consumers who are expected to exercise responsibility? Where is the personal responsibility in the deliberate targetting of small children with adverts aimed selling products almost guaranteed to create ill-health?
Ian, companies are in business to get people to buy their products. Small children do not have money to spend on consumer products, so by targetting small children, companies are actually targetting the adults. Adults are the ones who set the limits on what children can consume; not manufacturers of snacks and sweets.
If their own parents won’t take responsibility for them, don’t you think it’s rather impudent of you to demand that manufacturers do it for them? In other words, you have spotted a gap in the nanny state and you think that appealing to readers and commentators on the anglosphere’s premier libertarian blog might strike a chord?