Disease – a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms.
– Webster Dictionary
The American Medical Association has officially recognized obesity as a disease,
a move that could induce physicians to pay more attention to the condition and spur more insurers to pay for treatments.
– NY Times, June 18, 2013
The fancy bureaucratic body that brought you “bully awareness” in the summer of 2002, covered adroitly if not with snot-nosed assery in this space in the 6/26/02 Reality Check under the headline IN DEFENSE OF THE AMERICAN BULLY, now opens the floodgates to a juicy pile of human frailties with its “Obesity is a Disease” offering. And if you failed to notice the little nugget attached to the lead in this week’s NY Times piece about spurring more insurers to “pay for treatments,” then it gets even better for us all.
First things first: It is official that everything is now a disease and therefore must be treated as so.
I am vertically challenged.
Disease.
I am also a jerk.
Disease.
I cannot wait for my next annual physical. My doctor already thinks I’m insane. He’s going to love this one.
“How are you feeling, James?”
“Short.”
“Ha! Funny.”
“Discrimination!”
“What?”
“The person who came in before me was a load and I’m short; so what’s the difference?”
“There are no health concerns for being short.”
“Really? You should have seen the beatings I took in schoolyards. Also, I repeatedly wrench my back trying to reach high shelves. Not to mention the agony I’ve suffered searching for a decent-fitting tweed jacket.”
“This is not funny, what is actually wrong with you?”
“I’m also a jerk.”
“This is true, but it is not a disease.”
“Tell that to my wife.”
And believe me, I shall be taking these matters up with my insurance company, and just to stick the social knife in and twist it, I’m going to get a national insurer under the Affordable Care Act and you can pay for my being a jerk, which, in an existential sense, makes me an even greater jerk in need of serious attention.
Faith is now also a disease.
Believing in the existence of something with no immutable evidence is a serious disease. Now some would say this falls under the heading of insanity, but I ask: Who’s sicker, the corpulent or those who put the balance of their health and well-being on wild supernatural notions?
You know how many faiths there are and how much money these things bring in? There is a whole slew of the diseased out there just waiting to be treated. Soon there will be a pill for this: “Here, take two of these and by morning you’ll come to the conclusion that your entire belief system is childish and sad and you will then either turn into a jerk, which is something we also have a pill for, or live out your life not basing your view of reality on fairy tales.”
Now this is progress and evolution. The AMA has a point and I’m on board.
The only problem is it threatens the gay rehabilitation racket, especially now that everything is a disease—eye color, skin color, hairstyle, dialect, sexual orientation. Even Alan Chambers, whose unbelievably brilliant money-printing con-job Exodus International (another in the endless line of diseased faiths) had to close the largest gay rehabilitation centers going. Chambers, a self-loathing gay man whose wish was that everyone end up like him and shut off their identity under the guise of shame, guilt and that faith thing again to get “straight,” sees the writing on the wall: This is the AMA’s problem now.
Chambers recently addressed a gathering of the diseased faithful and said for the past 37 years this whole “you can pray the gay away” sham was hurtful and wrong and some other thing he thinks is either getting him into heaven or keeping him out of jail. Couldn’t be sure, since most of it was in tongues, but, suffice to say, there really isn’t any point in trying to change gays as there isn’t in changing Caucasians or people who are really good at playing the piano. These people are simply diseased.
Not sure how far we can go with sexual proclivity here, it has many possibilities that go far beyond things like “sex-addict,” which has all the scientific probability in humans as say alcoholism or gambling addiction or drug addiction, all of which, beyond mere genetics like in a preponderance of cases with obesity or sexual orientation, height, race or whatever else we’re passing around with all the sex, are apparently diseases.
And should we get in on the whole “what and who decides what makes someone obese” discussion? Does the line shift, like how much alcohol in the blood stream is legal? Or how much sugar should be in drinks? Or what plant you can smoke and which one you can’t? Or how fast you can go on certain roads?
And is fat like obese, as in “I’m feeling fat today?” Is it “I’m feeling diseased today?” Or “Man, I should not have eaten that street burrito at 2 a.m. after 15 beers” diseased? Or the “Entire Midwest region of the continental United States” diseased? Or “80 percent of the Pittsburgh Steelers tailgaters” disease?
And where does stupid fall in all this? Can we get a little love for the stupid? There are so many of us out here. We have talk shows and run for Congress and dupe the faithful and develop tv series that exploit the stupid and run customer service for Expedia and work the counters at Guitar Center and build condos in flood zones and get high-ranking jobs with the NSA and consider Chris Bosh, who scored zero points in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, part of some imaginary Big Three or root for the NY Jets or play the lottery or continue to teach our children that Columbus discovered America.
But most importantly, should there be a Jerk Council now? Can we get some funding on developing a cure, maybe call it Jerk-Off? Something catchy like that.
Just trying to help.
Which is also a disease.
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of the Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus” and “Midnight for Cinderella”
