Conservatives dig into Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign
February 26, 2011
Washington — Former First Ladies Barbara and Laura Bush worked to end illiteracy. Nancy Reagan famously took on teenage drug use. Lady Bird Johnson planted flowers. But none of them have been seared for something as seemingly benign as calling for kids to eat more vegetables, as Michelle Obama has.
Just about everyone will agree that the nation's children are getting fatter and that obesity is a serious health problem. But the first lady's push for healthier meals and more exercise, which marked its first anniversary this month, has provoked a backlash from the right, who complain that the only thing here that's supersized is Big Brother.
Critics have carped about Obama's spread at her Super Bowl party — and have suggested that the child-nutrition legislation she backed in Congress would bring about the end of school bake sales. Her work with the National Restaurant Assn. to develop healthier menu items has been decried in some circles as a government takeover of business.
And in January, some conservatives even suggested that Obama was endangering people, blaming an increase in pedestrian deaths on the first lady's campaign by saying that Americans were putting themselves at risk by walking more .....
Earlier this month, Mitt Romney, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, peppered his remarks with digs at the first lady and her husband.
Ridiculing President Obama's purported move toward the political center, Romney joked that the president's rhetoric had shifted so radically that "he sounded like he was going to dig up the first lady's organic garden to put in a Bob's Big Boy," Romney said.
Later, while equating Obama's economic policies to Marie Antoinette's purported line about the French peasantry — "Let them eat cake" — Romney corrected himself.
"I'm sorry," he crowed. "Organic cake."
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/26/nation/la-na-michelle-obama-obesity-20110227
