Rob Ford's Weight

Agreed. 

It's not as though Ford's policies would be acceptable if only he were height/weight proportinate.

Agreed. The whole "fat fuck" thing invalidates any criticism someone might make. I would even liken it to someone who calls a woman a "whore." It's a sign they aren't worth talking to any more.

Though we have had discussions on babble about the socioeconomic aspects of weight and fat-shaming. Specifically, that poor people can't afford healthy foods, fresh fruit and vegetables in winter etc, and health club memberships. Higher socioeconomic status is now associated with being thinner. Ford is definitely someone who can afford to do something about his weight, and he has a well-documented history of using his size to bully and intimidate.

Just throwing that out there before I set out into the cold to go to work...

I don't know if I'd use Henry Ford as an example of 'evil'...Afterall,if there was a hell,the first person you'd meet at the gates is Harry Truman.

As for Ford's weight,it has nothing to do with anything...Except for the fact that he probably is not in good health.

Yup, I'm with you.  I take issue with remarks about Ford's weight the same way I take issue with remarks about how women politicians, conservatives in particular, dress, wear their hair, etc.

Much as I loathe Rob Ford's politics and his sense of entitlement, I'm far more disappointed by those of his critics who would use his physical appearance as a mechanism for criticism. Shame.

Brachina wrote:

I oppose Ford's Idology, his rudeness, his ignorance, and his unprofessional conduct, and his arrogance, but for the love of all that is unholy ENOUGH ABOUT HIS WEIGHT. We on the left talk about Bullying, yet I see people on the left call him a fat slob and worse and honestly I'm sick of it, it makes me ashamed to be a lefty. His belly has nothing to do with his being unfit to be Mayor, any more then it affects Libby Davies or Bill Blaky ect... That woman who video tape of Rob Ford at KFC disgusts me, people should have acted with compassion and support for him to keep trying to achieve a healther weight.

---------------------

Ford made his weight 'relevant' to discussions surrounding his celebrity. He made his weight 'relevant' via a public relations campaign wherein he was going to lose x pounds by y date. Here is a CBC link to refresh your memory:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/06/18/toronto-ford-weig...

He failed, publicly. It is obvious to anyone with literary sensibility that Ford's plan was likely to lose weight, then go after city hall for excess (which he'd foreshadowed) in a bid to bring more austerity and contracting out to the City of Toronto (he contracted out garbage collection - "Hello Mafia garbage collection agency, how can I direct your call?").

Please, I love overweight people too, but Ford 'asked' for everyone to look at his weight - indeed, he begged for it.

I believe he deserves the attention.

This has 'everything' to do with his fitness to be Mayor - he's first to the trough with special treatment, and I should be allowed to use that metaphor since he brought his weight into the discussion in the first place.

If he wanted to lose the weight, I submit he should have instituted his own austerity agenda onto his 'own' appetite for fried chicken, just like the rest of us.

Yes I'm overweight, and I don't pretend it's a matter of mere will, and we all suffer with something, ok? You are misplacing your sympathies on someone who would eat you if it enhanced his self image or career to do so.

Writing is art and he made his physique and delivered his physical prowess, his football mentality and stature, to the fore, not the people of Toronto, and he cared not a whit for their desires. He delivered himself, stuffed with an apple in his mouth, and invited us all to partake.

For art sake, and for irony sake, and the sake of interesting plot twists, Rob Ford's weight is relevant to discussions about his career, because, quite simply, he willed it to be so!

Among football players, gaining weight is very often deliberate. Heavier people deliver more mass to the opponent in tackles, thus disabling play for the opponent where required. Weight is a tool, that he deploys and teaches young men to 'deploy' on the field.

Physical stature also is a physically measured criterion for boxing, wrestling, even football. Divisions are made by weight. And heavier women/men tend to play defensive positions, whereas lighter women/men play forward positions.  He used and deployed his playing of football, a sport where heavier men are known to be 'tougher' and more 'dominant', and rode on that wave into the political arena, exploiting his weight at any opportunity.

I stand by my remarks.

Thanks for the link. My note above explains the concept of relevance satisfactorily.

I'm disabled, and overweight, and that entitles me to my point of view on this board as much as any link you can provide. But more important is my rationale, see above, which supercedes based on relevance.

If one doesn't want weight brought up surrounding Rob Ford, at Babble, then it behooves one not to start a thread alerting readers to the issue. Because if ones does, some might think their POV is at least as 'relevant' as the one initiating the thread, and may respond in a manner which challenges established groupthink.

And I am capable of reading your remarks without the use of bold. Thanks for the visual assistance, but I have glasses, and they work satisfactorily.

It's like...unicorns. If you don't like unicorns, then don't start a thread about them. Make sense? But if you just want everyone to agree it's not nice to make fun of Rob Ford's weight, sure, it's not nice, but we're not trying to make friends, are we? We're responding to his PR campaign in a rational manner. Alerting readers to ironies that shouldn't be lost is the job of those who write for others and that supercedes niceness because it 'informs' and 'reminds' in a way that 'niceness' or empathic role taking simply does not. And if you don't like me saying Rob Ford asked for it, then you shouldn't start a thread about it.

It seems that NOT commenting on Rob Ford's weight is exactly what his PR department 'wants' or 'intends' for people to do. Do you think his PR people hadn't calculated that there are a lot of people out there with weight issues, and they were counting on a collective 'stifling' of commentary simply because weight is a difficult topic to discuss?

True enough - I've seen him take a football and run and then unceremoniously fall down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzM8b2vJsMY

People were attacking Ford for his weight long before his public weight loss challenge.

Let's be honest. When someone calls him a "fat fuck", they're not saying, "Gee, what a great nose tackle you must be."

[url=http://www.shamelessmag.com/blog/2011/07/fatness-and-rob-ford/]Fatness and Rob Ford[/url]

Julia Horel wrote:

I am fat, and I am right here when you say that Rob Ford would do better to lay off the gravy. I’m right here when you say that grotesque individuals like Ford would be a lot better off if they got on a bicycle now and then, because they’re harming the environment as well as being grossly obese. I’m right here, and in many cases I am putting myself out there and directly questioning your need to bring Ford’s weight into a conversation where it is completely irrelevant, and you are either ignoring me or telling me that his weight is a fair point of criticism because it represents his supposed sloth, greed and disregard for the environment, because he’s a bully who “throws his weight around.”

Let me tell you something else: this hurts me personally.

I am a fat person who bicycles. I am a fat person who does not own a car. I am a fat person who cares about the environment. I am a fat person with progressive politics, who volunteers for progressive organizations, and who happens to carry around more adipose tissue than average. When you tell Rob Ford that he’s a fat fuck who needs to get on a bike, you erase me as a fat cyclist. When you say that mentioning Ford’s weight is justified metaphorically because it represents conservative values, you erase me as a fat progressive. If you think that correlating Ford’s fatness with his terrible politics doesn’t also strongly imply a criticism of fat more broadly, you aren’t thinking critically.

When you use fatness as an insult, you are chipping away at my hard-earned sense of dignity, acceptance and self-love of my fat body. And when you brush off my concerns about the language we’re using in our critiques of the mayor, I’m hearing, loud and clear, that I don’t have the right progressive body, that I fall outside your realm of acceptability as a progressive person in Toronto.

Rabble_Incognito wrote:

And the fact that Rob Ford's play on words and weight didn't work to his advantage, is testament to his incompetence with politics, words and with people. And we the public, and writers, should be allowed to fill our plates with his just desserts.

And we, the morbidly obese, will be here to say "fuck you" whenever you do.

So, fill your plate and fuck you.

Rabble_Incognito wrote:

Ford made his weight 'relevant' to discussions surrounding his celebrity. He made his weight 'relevant' via a public relations campaign wherein he was going to lose x pounds by y date. Here is a CBC link to refresh your memory:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/06/18/toronto-ford-weig...

He failed, publicly. It is obvious to anyone with literary sensibility that Ford's plan was likely to lose weight, then go after city hall for excess (which he'd foreshadowed) in a bid to bring more austerity and contracting out to the City of Toronto (he contracted out garbage collection - "Hello Mafia garbage collection agency, how can I direct your call?").

Please, I love overweight people too, but Ford 'asked' for everyone to look at his weight - indeed, he begged for it.

I believe he deserves the attention.

No, sorry, you're wrong.  I don't think he deserves the attention for his weight.  And there were all sorts of lefties - tons of them on Facebook when I still had an account, here on babble, and elsewhere who were mocking him for his weight and pretending it had anything to do with anything (sorry, lagatta, but no, it's horseshit that his weight has anything to do with his war on cyclists - there are lots of thin non-cyclists who drive cars everywhere and agree with him) long before his weight challenge.

In fact, I think the weight challenge was probably a defensive reaction to the massive amounts of fat-shaming and nastiness in the media - there was at least a year of fat jokes and nastiness before he started the "cut the waist" challenge.  And I think it's really sad that he felt like he had to do that in order to shut his critics up.  Ever since he came onto the mayoralty scene in Toronto it's felt like fucking junior high in left-wing circles with the number of people who have been making snide fat jokes.  And you know what?  Fat jokes weren't funny for fat kids like me in junior high, and they're not funny now, even when they're aimed at people I don't like.

The worst part about his weight challenge is that I knew from the very beginning that he was going to fail.  Why?  Because every morbidly obese person who tries to lose weight "the old fashioned way" fails - or at least almost all of them.  Only about 3% of obese people who lose weight are able to keep it off after five years.  Practically everyone gains it back.  He'd have been better off getting bariatric surgery - so far, that's the only method that has had any decent success rates over the long term.  But no one cares about the science when it comes to weight loss - everyone believes the latest horseshit peddled by Dr. Oz.  Doctors still tell their morbidly obese patients to "diet and exercise" even though they know the long term effects are that the weight will get gained back plus more.  And I think it's because our society needs to believe that morbidly obese people could lose the weight by dieting and riding their bikes to work if they really wanted to, because otherwise they'd have to stop mocking them.  And that's just no fucking fun, is it.

Obesity, when it is morbid obesity, can be and often is considered a disability.  I know there are different schools of thought on that, including in the fat acceptance movement, about whether obesity is a disability or not.  As a morbidly obese person, I consider it a disability, personally.  We end up with significantly decreased mobility, and health issues as a result.  I would venture a guess that every morbidly obese person has tried extremely hard to lose weight at many, many times in their lives.  We almost always end up fatter for our trouble.  But you know where the fat acceptance movement agrees with people who consider morbid obesity a disability?  Neither group thinks that fat people should be shamed or mocked.

What do you mean, "I love overweight people"?  What does that even mean?  Are we all the same?  I don't "love overweight people".  I love some overweight people, and I despise others, including Rob Ford.  Weight has nothing to do with whether I "love" people. 

It's funny that lagatta brings up cycling as a good reason to criticize Rob Ford's weight.  Some of the very worst fatphobia I've seen in general and about Rob Ford has come from Toronto cyclists.  Nasty, foul, holier-than-thou, disgusting comments are quite common.  (Luckily, most cyclists I know personally are more enlightened than that, but just take a look at any article about cycling issues that attracts comments from cyclists, especially if they're about sharing infrastructure with e-bikes, or about Rob Ford's war on cyclists and you'll see lots of examples of what I mean.)  The mainstay being, "Hey, if Rob Ford would just ride a bike instead of his car, maybe he wouldn't be such a fat slob."

As a person who has always felt that cycling and transit infrastructure should be a priority, it always makes me feel really good hearing that sort of thing from supposed progressive allies.  Rob Ford probably couldn't ride a bike even if he wanted to.  Many morbidly obese people have a hard time walking, much less riding bikes.  Hey, I know what would be really progressive - let's mock people for having decreased mobility due to their weight.

I have compromised - I don't have a car, instead I have an e-bike.  I have a bicycle too, but I can't ride very far on it at all - it's extremely uncomfortable, and I certainly couldn't commute with it the way I do with my e-bike.  My e-bike is way better for the environment than cars when transit is too inconvenient (and it often is when you go north of the downtown area due to underfunded and crowded transit), and it means I have the same level of mobility as those who ride regular bikes.  Both radiorahim and I have been mocked with nasty, fatphobic comments by cyclists (and both of us are extremely careful to give cyclists a wide berth and always cede the way for cyclists).

I am so sick of supposedly progressive people making excuses for why it's okay to make oppressive comments about fat people.  It really pisses me off.

Michelle wrote:

Hear, hear.  I saw your thread title and was all ready to come in here loaded for bear.  Glad you wrote what you did!

You came here loaded for bear, and you got to say Fuck you.

You didn't really address the issue of who is bringing the issue to the fore. You came here looking for a fight, and you got one! And you got to say Fuck you.

I hope that satisfied you.

I'm always loaded for bear when people think it's okay to mock people like me.  I'm sick of rolling over and taking it or politely laughing while hurting inside over their stupid, insensitive and oppressive comments.

You're welcome.  You richly earned it.

You are an open wound. I didn't hurt you. You made yourself say Fuck you in an open discussion, against someone who said 'nothing' to hurt you personally. You didn't even read what I wrote - you just blew off with Fuck you.

I bet you're a real deep thinker when you're not blowing people off with Fuck you comments.

There is nothing oppressive about what I wrote. Please cite said oppression.

Michelle wrote:

Rabble_Incognito wrote:

Ford made his weight 'relevant' to discussions surrounding his celebrity. He made his weight 'relevant' via a public relations campaign wherein he was going to lose x pounds by y date. Here is a CBC link to refresh your memory:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/06/18/toronto-ford-weig...

He failed, publicly. It is obvious to anyone with literary sensibility that Ford's plan was likely to lose weight, then go after city hall for excess (which he'd foreshadowed) in a bid to bring more austerity and contracting out to the City of Toronto (he contracted out garbage collection - "Hello Mafia garbage collection agency, how can I direct your call?").

Please, I love overweight people too, but Ford 'asked' for everyone to look at his weight - indeed, he begged for it.

I believe he deserves the attention.

No, sorry, you're wrong.  I don't think he deserves the attention for his weight.  And there were all sorts of lefties - tons of them on Facebook when I still had an account, here on babble, and elsewhere who were mocking him for his weight and pretending it had anything to do with anything (sorry, lagatta, but no, it's horseshit that his weight has anything to do with his war on cyclists - there are lots of thin non-cyclists who drive cars everywhere and agree with him) long before his weight challenge.

In fact, I think the weight challenge was probably a defensive reaction to the massive amounts of fat-shaming and nastiness in the media - there was at least a year of fat jokes and nastiness before he started the "cut the waist" challenge.  And I think it's really sad that he felt like he had to do that in order to shut his critics up.  Ever since he came onto the mayoralty scene in Toronto it's felt like fucking junior high in left-wing circles with the number of people who have been making snide fat jokes.  And you know what?  Fat jokes weren't funny for fat kids like me in junior high, and they're not funny now, even when they're aimed at people I don't like.

The worst part about his weight challenge is that I knew from the very beginning that he was going to fail.  Why?  Because every morbidly obese person who tries to lose weight "the old fashioned way" fails - or at least almost all of them.  Only about 3% of obese people who lose weight are able to keep it off after five years.  Practically everyone gains it back.  He'd have been better off getting bariatric surgery - so far, that's the only method that has had any decent success rates over the long term.  But no one cares about the science when it comes to weight loss - everyone believes the latest horseshit peddled by Dr. Oz.  Doctors still tell their morbidly obese patients to "diet and exercise" even though they know the long term effects are that the weight will get gained back plus more.  And I think it's because our society needs to believe that morbidly obese people could lose the weight by dieting and riding their bikes to work if they really wanted to, because otherwise they'd have to stop mocking them.  And that's just no fucking fun, is it.

Obesity, when it is morbid obesity, can be and often is considered a disability.  I know there are different schools of thought on that, including in the fat acceptance movement, about whether obesity is a disability or not.  As a morbidly obese person, I consider it a disability, personally.  We end up with significantly decreased mobility, and health issues as a result.  I would venture a guess that every morbidly obese person has tried extremely hard to lose weight at many, many times in their lives.  We almost always end up fatter for our trouble.  But you know where the fat acceptance movement agrees with people who consider morbid obesity a disability?  Neither group thinks that fat people should be shamed or mocked.

What do you mean, "I love overweight people"?  What does that even mean?  Are we all the same?  I don't "love overweight people".  I love some overweight people, and I despise others, including Rob Ford.  Weight has nothing to do with whether I "love" people.

It's funny that lagatta brings up cycling as a good reason to criticize Rob Ford's weight.  Some of the very worst fatphobia I've seen in general and about Rob Ford has come from Toronto cyclists.  Nasty, foul, holier-than-thou, disgusting comments are quite common.  (Luckily, most cyclists I know personally are more enlightened than that, but just take a look at any article about cycling issues that attracts comments from cyclists, especially if they're about sharing infrastructure with e-bikes, or about Rob Ford's war on cyclists and you'll see lots of examples of what I mean.)  The mainstay being, "Hey, if Rob Ford would just ride a bike instead of his car, maybe he wouldn't be such a fat slob."

As a person who has always felt that cycling and transit infrastructure should be a priority, it always makes me feel really good hearing that sort of thing from supposed progressive allies.  Rob Ford probably couldn't ride a bike even if he wanted to.  Many morbidly obese people have a hard time walking, much less riding bikes.  Hey, I know what would be really progressive - let's mock people for having decreased mobility due to their weight.

I have compromised - I don't have a car, instead I have an e-bike.  I have a bicycle too, but I can't ride very far on it at all - it's extremely uncomfortable, and I certainly couldn't commute with it the way I do with my e-bike.  My e-bike is way better for the environment than cars when transit is too inconvenient (and it often is when you go north of the downtown area due to underfunded and crowded transit), and it means I have the same level of mobility as those who ride regular bikes.  Both radiorahim and I have been mocked with nasty, fatphobic comments by cyclists (and both of us are extremely careful to give cyclists a wide berth and always cede the way for cyclists).

I am so sick of supposedly progressive people making excuses for why it's okay to make oppressive comments about fat people.  It really pisses me off.

Do you ever count how many times you used the word 'I'?

It's not about you. Get over yourself. Nobody cares that you ride an e bike, at least as it pertains to Rob Ford's weight loss extravaganza.

Previously on babble:
Fat phobia
Is PETA directing "hate speech" toward fat people?

Please show me the wounding comment, aside from the 'open wound' one, which she brought up - I'm not mistaken, right, she did bring her own personal wound into the discussion, right? She made it relevant, right?

And what I meant by I love overweight people, is that I love people, regardless of their weight.

Do I love Rob Ford? No, he's an exception. And Michelle, because she's a poor thinker and reasoner, and takes things personally and distorts any commentary about weight into a personal attack against her. And because she can't control herself in discourse and resorts to Fuck you instead of principled reasoning and discussion, thus showing that she's a narcissist and has to have attention focused on her and her rights even to the exclusion of reasoned discourse about a public figure who made his career making his weight an issue.

And you can't show me a wounding comment, can you Catchfire? I thought so.

Please show me where I am Fat Phobic.

I thought so, you can't.

Fat Phobic is a brand you're going to try to brand me with - but it won't work because there is no offending commentary against obese people, only commentary about Rob Ford's use of weight metaphor to assuage voters towards city hall reduction programs.

Yes, of course I brought it into the discussion.  And I'm quite happy to admit that I have an open wound about the mocking and fat jokes and physical bullying I have had directed at me throughout my life (particularly in childhood, but also as an adult). 

That's exactly what it's about.  Like any other oppression, that's how fatphobia works on a personal level.  On a systemic level, the way it works is that people consider you less competent, less able to do things that have nothing to do with weight, most things aren't made to fit your body, and you have a sense (usually under the surface) that society considers you less valuable than people who are smaller.

The personal wound is usually scabbed over, but every time there are fatphobic comments bandied about, the scab gets picked raw.  I think it's like that for most fat people who have had to deal with discrimination or mocking of themselves personally, or when they see other people picked on for their weight.

It would be much more comfortable if people didn't talk about their emotional wounds, wouldn't it?  But after 40 years, I'm kind of tired of just staying quiet.  I have a very uncomfortable feeling right now because it's not considered okay to admit that you are wounded and hurt, especially in the middle of an argument.  But yes, I am.  And that's a perfectly good reason why progressive people shouldn't perpetuate fatphobia.  It actually hurts people, and not just your direct target (Ford).

/ silently applauding Michelle /

You are mensch Michelle.

Michelle wrote:

But I had a slight tantrum too.  I told him "fuck you".  You should probably give me a time out too then. ;)

I feel bad because I never wanted to see him suspended, and I wouldn't have carried the argument this far with him if I'd thought that would happen.  This is one of those issues that the left hasn't "settled" yet, and it will take a lot of discussion, and yes, sometimes really heated argument and even a tantrum or two (or more!), before it will be.

I'll stop posting in this thread until he's back - that feels more fair to me on a personal level.  If you're reading this, RI, we'll see you in a few days. :)

Edited to add: That said, I didn't see the posts you deleted, Catchfire, so while I will do what I need to do, I also respect your decision.  I know how much fun it is to moderate during an argument that's turning into a flame war...

How do you want people to learn not to use oppressive language or change their way of thinking?  We talk about how we want to punish racists, bigots etc when they step over the line to teach them a lesson. Why should this be different? If he didnt relax and respond positively after the first few posts, did you really think he would improve?  This kind of time out is how we teach people whats acceptable and not acceptable so its not a bad thing here really

Being fat doesn't necessarily indicate poor health.  Some people are simply of that body type.

Regardless, Ford himself brought attention to his weight with his "Cut the Waist" weigh-ins.  So, I think giving it some attention is fair game.  This pressure to stifle the urge to say anything about his weight is similar (though not parallel) to that story of people ignoring that the king has no clothes (not that I'm against naturalists, but if the state of undress is greater than the norm, then I feel it's fair to comment about it).  Again, the man brought up the issue himself in a failed attempt at creating another cute "stop the gravy train" slogan (in this case, "cut the waist").  And I don't think his having a large physique is detrimental to him.  Power is expected in a leader, and a large frame has power.  Robert Stanfield's slender frame duffing a CFL kickoff affected him more than weight has affected Ford.

It does seem people here will use any opportunity to fight one another.  No wonder right-wingers are more successful in pursuing their agendas.

Michelle you have nothing to apologize for. He came in looking for a fight.  I commented on his post with a quote from an article and he then attacked me and made stupid comments on bolding for emphasis that he seemed to be flinging as a personal insult.  I then tried to calm the waters and he took my good will and tried to beat me with it.  I am obese now but as a kid and young adult I was not so I appreciate your perspective as some one who has had to deal with it your whole life.  He was baiting you by ignoring everything you said and then reiterating the points you had just told him were hurtful to you.

I'll put money most people reading the thread silently cheered when you told him where to go.

Mr. Tea with respect being obese is not a lifestyle choice.  That is one of the major themes in Michelle's excellent posts.  Being part of the 0.1% is a class issue and again not a lifestyle choice since us poor folks can't chose the champagne lifestyle.