Save the Whales

Their annual assault on Christmas having ended again in a draw, the culture warriors are now redeploying their foot soldiers in a new battle, one that threatens the very fabric of America's drawstring waistband: The War on Fat People.

New York City bans unhealthy trans-fats, and Massachusetts considers the same. Schools now send home body mass index report cards, prompting at least one six-year-old to worry about her figure.

My criticism of the body mass index scale aside (Tom Brady overweight?), what are schools doing here? Don't elementary school students do a good enough job at ostracizing fat kids themselves, without the help of the teachers?

I fear these are but the opening salvos in a vicious confrontation that will end with Count Chocula stabbed through the heart with sharpened celery stalk, shaky Internet videos of Ronald McDonald's hastily arranged hanging, and the raspberry-flavored blood of the Kool-Aid man irrigating our streets.

Doesn't anybody realize we need the fat kids? They're our future poker champions, defensive linemen, comic geniuses. I'm afraid the path we trod is wrought with dangers that the skinny are too afraid to see.

I never thought I'd take solace in the dark vision Aldous Huxley foresees in Brave New World, but believe it or not it provides the only silver lining. Even in his genetically engineered distopia, the feminine foil is still referred to again and again as pneumatic -- plump, zaftig, and bosomy.