Photo: Stefan KlooIf you look under “irony” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Rush Limbaugh calling Michelle Obama fat. But that’s just what he did on Monday on his colonic irrigation of a radio show. Let’s take this piece by piece, because there is too much stupid to swallow without chewing.
“The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice,” Limbaugh said Monday on his radio program. “And then we hear that she’s out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving.”
Okay, listen, I don’t know what Rush Limbaugh eats. I know he’s a fat@ss, but so am I, and I have days when I’m lucky to get 1,500 calories period. (Stomach problems. Limbaugh might have them too, right? It would explain the painkillers.) So I am open to the possibility that this is the one time in the history of ever that Rush Limbaugh is not being a towering hypocrite. However, the fact that he thinks a serving of ribs has 1,500 calories when the internet says it has 234 implies that either he likes making up numbers, or he eats A LOT OF RIBS.
(In fact he might be looking at the calorie content of an entire rack of ribs, which would mean it’s the latter. Perhaps that’s how food works for Rush — if you “eat cake,” it means you eat a cake, if you “eat cereal,” it means you eat a box of cereal, etc. Let me be the first to say that is NOT how it necessarily works for me and Michelle and the rest of us fatties.)
“She is a hypocrite,” Limbaugh continued. “Leaders are supposed to be leaders. If we are supposed to go out and eat nothing, if we are supposed to eat roots, berries, and tree bark, show us how.”
So the options are 1) ALL-DAY RIB PARTY or 2) tree bark. Seriously, does Rush know how food works? I guess he has people to go to the grocery store for him.
The Vail Daily reported Sunday Mrs. Obama dined at the restaurant Kelly Liken in Vail Village, ordering “a pickled pumpkin salad with arugula and a braised ancho-chile short rib with hominy wild mushrooms and sautéed kale.” The first family, minus the president, went to Colorado for a long weekend of skiing.
Wait, these were BOUGIE RIBS? I’m pretty sure that when you get bougie ribs you are not eating an entire rack. JUST A GUESS but I don’t think a restaurant that has “pickled pumpkin salad” is serving up ribs by the bucket. What this meal looks like is a pantload of exciting vegetables plus some meat. THIS IS NOT THE BUTTER AND BBQ SAUCE ORGY YOU ADVERTISED, RUSH.
“I’m trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you,” Limbaugh also said Monday.
Okay, first of all: Dear pot, this is kettle, go f*ck yourself. Second, obviously I shouldn’t be surprised that Limbaugh’s idea of the pinnacle of female health is “a woman Alex Rodriguez might date,” but it is pretty telling. These are models and actresses — you want to talk about people who only eat tree bark? Pretty sure Michelle’s recommendations about “healthy eating” still involve eating. Also, Alex Rodriguez has been dating people like Madonna, Cameron Diaz, and Kate Hudson; black women have been on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue three times, and two of them were Tyra Banks. There JUST MIGHT be more than one reason why Michelle Obama doesn’t match Limbaugh’s picture of ideal health — and more than one reason why his picture of ideal health is obscenely and insultingly narrow.
And here’s where this becomes worth spending the time to demolish, instead of just filing under “Rush Limbaugh is a gigantic butthorn”: Rush isn’t the only one who thinks, on some level, that healthy living is only for people that A-Rod might date. If he wants to undermine Michelle Obama’s pro-healthy-child efforts, he couldn’t be doing a better job — even though everything he’s saying is patently ridiculous to anybody with a working cerebellum — because his stupid horsecrap feeds into that widespread fallacy. Nothing jacks up health promotion like the idea that health is for other, better people.
Michelle, you eat your goddamn ribs, and your kale and pumpkin, and then you go the hell skiing. Skiing is fun, all those foods are made out of food, and not that this matters but you look awesome. That makes you the perfect leader for the sort of movement that might actually make America healthy. The movement that says you give up the ability to be healthy if you eat a rib, or if you can’t see your ribs, has been doing a lousy job so far.
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