Fox Host Defends Calling Michelle Obama Fat
Written by Hannah Groch-Begley
Published
Fox News host Keith Ablow defended his attack on First Lady Michelle Obama's weight, telling Politico that it was “hypocrisy” for her to act as a “role model” on diet when she “has not been consistently a picture of fitness.”
Ablow came under fire for his comments on the August 12 edition of Fox's Outnumbered, where he argued that Michelle Obama is not a credible voice on school nutrition because “she needs to drop a few” pounds. Even one of Ablow's colleagues at Fox, Janice Dean, criticized his remarks, tweeting “please keep your comments about women 'dropping a few' to yourself.”
Nevertheless the next day Ablow told Politico that he was “not taking food advice from an American who dislikes America” and “has not been consistently a picture of fitness”:
“I do dislike hypocrisy and I really do believe that people speaking about diet should be role models themselves, and I'm not sure if the First Lady is that role model,” Ablow said in an interview.
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“I'm not taking food advice from an American who dislikes America, who in many photographs during her tenure as First Lady is obviously not fit, and who has a record of saying things that show that she's two-faced,” Ablow said Wednesday. “This should be obvious, I don't know why it isn't.”
Ablow is standing by his comments and saying that people “should be less sensitive about talking about [weight].”
One reason for his criticism, he says, relates to consistency.
“It happens to be the case that the First Lady during her tenure has not been consistently a picture of fitness,” he said. “That's all, it is just a fact.”
Michelle Obama has made fighting childhood obesity a cornerstone of her time in the White House, helping to put in place federal school lunch standards that emphasize healthy eating.