Nanny State

On the forty-second page of “Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America In” author David Harsanyi wrote (emphasis added):

"You don't need nicotine or an illegal drug to create an addiction. You're creating a craving," Hirsch once explained. But more important for the justification of his case, the lawyer maintained "that the fast-food industry has not been totally up front with the consumers." Thus Hirsch was trying to coerce fast-food companies into offering "a larger variety to the consumers, including non-meat vegetarian, less grams of fat," and a reduction in meal size.

Hirsch also demanded that federal legislation require warning labels on fast food similar to those on tobacco products. As many fast-food companies have begun to provide detailed labels of all nutritional content, this truly was grandstanding. But even if you're inclined to believe Hirsch's intentions were unsullied by the dollar—and this would be a massive leap of faith—what we have on our hands is a full-blown nanny.

In the early stages of Jazlyn's suit, the press had a field day. The always cheeky New York Post ran an entertaining piece accusing Hirsch of being almost "singularly responsible for making attorneys the most hated briefcase carriers in the world." Law professor Donald Garner opined in The Washington Post that obesity lawsuits portray "Americans as the most pathetic, pitiable people in the world, that we are incapable of limiting what we eat." Even the usually composed and regal television anchorwoman Diane Sawyer was impelled to ask Hirsch, "Do you realize the whole world is laughing at you?"

No big deal. The world had laughed before. The thick-skinned Hirsch's first crack at litigating the fast-food industry into low-fat submission utilized a highly suspect and completely disingenuous plantiff named Caesar Barber. A maintenance supervisor in his mid-fifites, Barber claimed that he ate at fast-food restaurants four or five times a week and, until recently, had no idea that his diet was slowly killing him. Unlike Jazlyn, Barber didn't have his par[ents]

More information about “Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America In” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Amazon.com
• Powell's Books
• Barnes & Noble

(Broadway Books, September 2007. Hardcover, 291 pages. ISBN: 0767924320; EAN: 9780767924320.)