Never one to miss an opportunity to attack President Obama, the first lady, or health care reform on his radio show (not necessarily in that order), Rush Limbaugh managed to hit all three in the span of a few seconds today while mocking Obama's health care summit. Limbaugh, referring to Obama's anecdote about having to rush his daughters to the emergency room, stated:
LIMBAUGH: Any person in America, from the richest guy in the country to the cheapest, poorest illegal immigrant can do exactly the same thing Obama just described and that's go to the emergency room. And Tom Coburn made that point. Everybody gets treated in this country. That's not what we're here talking about. We're talking about fraud, waste -- we just need to get it out of there.
Now, why, since Obama just described this wonderful system where his two daughters -- two fat daughters, according to his wife -- his two fat daughters came down with some sort of a disease and had to rush them to the emergency room, why design a system that destroys the very best private health care that he says he's so thankful for?
Limbaugh cited no evidence that Michelle Obama -- who has made it a personal goal to raise awareness of, and combat, childhood obesity -- has ever once referred to her daughters as “fat.” Obama did mention her children during an appearance on Fox News' Huckabee, where she talked about her impetus for starting the Let's Move campaign:
MICHELLE OBAMA: I come to this issue more so as a mom than a first lady and I shared my story before because this is really how I became aware of the issue just in my own kids. You know, life has changed for families a way that I can see: We're busier; we're less active; you know, our kids watch more TV; sometimes it's hard to get outside; drive-thru fast food is easier and cheaper; and as a result, you know, we're seeing the effects on our kids and I saw it on mine. And it was because of my pediatrician that just sort of waved a red flag, you know.
MIKE HUCKABEE: What did he say?
MICHELLE OBAMA: He said, you know, he monitored our kids' body mass index. He didn't just do it for our kids, but he did this throughout his practice because he was seeing obesity rates increase. It was in an urban African-American setting and he saw those trends, so he did it for all of his patients. And he just said, you know, it -- you know, this -- the trajectory isn't what it should be so you may want to think about doing something. And I didn't know what to do. So we just started making some really small changes in our diet: more water, less fruit juices, more vegetables, I cooked a little bit more -- you know, even though we still had to go out because we were busy -- made sure my kids weren't sitting in front of the TV -- no TV during the week. Little things like that.
HUCKABEE: No TV for your kids during the week?
MICHELLE OBAMA: During the week -- you know, just on the weekend, and now they have homework, so you know they're really busy. So with those minor changes, I saw the impact on my kids almost immediately. So when I got to this position, I thought, you know, families don't even know how modern day life has really changed the way our kids move and eat, and if I didn't know, you know, what about communities where people aren't even talking about this issue? So, I thought that this platform would give me an opportunity to shine a light, to give more information to parents, to talk about health of food in schools, to talk about access and affordability issues, so it is really personal for me.
She made similar comments during an event in late January where she talked about the concerns of her children's pediatrician, who she said “warned that he was concerned that something was getting off-balance” and “cautioned me that I had to take a look at my own children's BMI.” The AP further reported:
Obama said parents often recognize that kids in general don't eat right and aren't exercising enough, but “we always think that only happens to someone else's kids, and I was in that position.”
“Even though I wasn't exactly sure at that time what I was supposed to do with this information about my children's BMI, I knew that I had to do something,” she said. “I had to lead our family to a different way.”
The first lady said that over the next few months she made some small changes that got her daughters back on track. No more weekday TV. More attention to portion sizes. Low-fat milk. Water bottles in the lunch boxes. Grapes on the breakfast table. Apple slices at lunch. Colorful vegetables on the dinner table.
“It was really very minor stuff, but these small changes resulted in some really significant improvements, and I didn't know it would,” Obama said. “It was so significant that the next time we visited our pediatrician, he was amazed. He looked over the girls' charts and he said, 'What on earth are you doing?' ”
Did I miss the part where she called her daughters “fat”?