Bloomberg Brave or Stupid?
It's been a good 11 or 12 years since I actually called New York City "home" so I haven't followed Bloomberg as a mayor. A recent piece by the 24-hour local news station NY1, however, just came to my attention. In the article, Bloomberg, who is noted as an avid jogger and someone who eschews high-calorie foods, ridicules the infamous Dr. Robert C. Atkins, going so far as to call into question the actual cause of his death. Stuart Trager, currently the media frontman for the Atkins Diet, wondered if it were a joke. I wonder too. This is something I might have expected from Howard Stern, but from the mayor of a metropolis? Ok, perhaps Marion Barry, former mayor of my current home town, has said much more outlandish things, but Bloomberg is not a drug addict, at least as far as we know.
Some of you out there who have similar proclivities to Bloomberg's may actually be applauding his forthrightness. Perhaps he is brave to speak his mind, but I think there is a fair degree of stupidity mixed in with this. Millions of Americans (and New Yorkers) are on the Atkins diet or on similar low-carb regimes. By insulting their patron saint, he has immediately alienated all these people! That's not very smart politicking! It's one thing if Bloomberg has actual concerns about the health issues surrounding low-carb, but his comments don't make him sound very educated about the subject, they actually make him sound like someone who has a personal aversion to fat in food, a low-fat fanatic who entertains conspiracy theories because the fact that eating fat might actually be healthy for you doesn't jive with his view of the world.
Of course I am coming at it from a biased point of view, but even so, with the current popularity of such plans, how can any politician rail against their modern-day popularizer and expect not to get damaged by this in some way? For Pete's sake, they guy is dead. Maybe he had flaws (don't we all?), and maybe you personally disagree with the guy, but he help a lot of people lose weight, was a tireless advocate for his cause, and was headquartered in New York. Bloomberg should be keeping such comments to himself, lest he be labeled as an insensitive boor. But perhaps he's already labeled that way - I haven't been following his mayoral career, so I don't know...