Big Momma Michelle Obama: Food profiteer-turned-food cop
My syndicated column today takes on the First Lady’s hypocritical war on junk food. You can find the White House obesity task force report that lays the groundwork for Mrs. Obama’s nutritional power grab here. Or as White House aide Melody Barnes puts it: “It will serve as a roadmap for the work we need to do together to make sure that our kids grow up healthy and have the opportunity to live active lives.” My roadmap on the SEIU connection to Mrs. O’s campaign is here.
Related: Food police state alert – 3rd-grader gets one-week detention for possessing a Jolly Rancher candy. Michelle Obama gives the punishment two thumbs up!
***
Big Momma Michelle Obama: Food profiteer-turned-food cop
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
Let me summarize first lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity agenda: Shed as I say, not as I gain. While she crusades for organic foods and puts government pressure on corporations to stop marketing fast food and junk food to children, Mrs. Obama herself profited from the very same processed food industry she now demonizes.
In June 2005, a few months after her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate, Mrs. Obama hustled a seat on the corporate Board of Directors of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. Despite zero experience, the food-processing company put her on its audit and nominating and corporate governance committees. For her on-the-job training and the privilege of putting her name and face on their literature, the company forked over $45,000 in 2005 and $51,200 in 2006 to Mrs. Obama — as well as 7,500 TreeHouse stock options worth more than $72,000 for each year.
The chairman of the TreeHouse Foods board, Sam K. Reed, was a top executive at Kellogg’s and Keebler Foods, home of that great menace to children, the Keebler Elf. Before that, he headed up Mother’s Cake and Cookie Company. The conglomerate sells cheese sauces, Cremora non-dairy creamer, instant soup, puddings and powdered soft drink mixes. Hardly the stuff of Mrs. Obama’s new vision of nutritional paradise. TreeHouse is also a leading supplier of pickles used in the burgers of evil fast food chain McDonald’s — exactly the kind of corporate restaurants Mrs. Obama is now targeting in her war on urban “food deserts.”
The corporation-bashing Mrs. Obama would have continued raking in her TreeHouse cash if it hadn’t been for her husband’s pesky pledge to pander to Big Labor and swear off Wal-Mart. The retail giant, you see, happened to be TreeHouse’s biggest customer. And Wal-Mart is to Big Labor as sunshine is to Dracula.
In May 2007, Obama told AFL-CIO workers in Trenton, N.J., that Wal-Mart was dead to him. “I won’t shop there,” he pledged, with an eye toward embarrassing then-chief rival Hillary Clinton, who had served on Wal-Mart’s board from 1986-1992. The AFL-CIO has waged relentless attacks on Wal-Mart, dubbing it the “Poster Store for Greed.” That, by extension, would make Mrs. Obama — all-too-happy recipient of a Wal-Mart dependent compensation package worth more than $100,000 in 2008, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records — a Poster Child for Ancillary Avarice.
Candidate Obama shrugged off his wife’s conflict of interest. “Michelle and I have to live in the world and pay taxes and pay for our kids and save for retirement,” Obama explained to Crain’s Chicago Business magazine before his White House bid. Political expediency, alas, required that the candidate’s wife step down when the issue reared its head after Obama’s Wal-Mart bashing during the presidential campaign cycle. True to form, Mrs. Obama turned the decision into an ostentatious display of martyrdom:
“As my campaign commitments continue to ramp up, it is becoming more difficult for me to provide the type of focus I would like on my professional responsibilities,” said Chicago’s Joan of Arc in a resignation statement eight days after her husband declared his boycott of the stores stocked with food items processed and distributed by her TreeHouse colleagues. “My priorities, particularly at this important time, are ensuring that our young daughters feel a sense of comfort and normalcy in this process, and that I can support my husband in his presidential campaign to bring much needed change to this country.”
She saw no conflict then. And she sees no conflict now in wielding her East Wing clout to restrict the advertising free speech of the food industry that lined her pocketbook with big, fat paychecks. The Obama White House is on an insatiable control binge. No private space has been left behind — not your grocery aisles, not your children’s TV shows, not even your refrigerator.
Give the first lady this: She has an uncanny knack for wrapping her self-interests in the mantle of self-sacrifice and public service. It’s the Obama way.
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It is nice to know that our nation is led by such people.
Thank you to all those who elected Obama and the Democrats.
You’ve succeeded in ushering an era of a mixture of Fascism, Socialism, and Communism. How much worse can our nation become? How much deeper will she fall into the abyss?
Is this the Change we are supposed to be thankful for.
I suppose we must be thankful that with Obama comes this baggage, his wife, Michelle, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong, intruding into the private lives of individual citizens, parents., etc.
These Obamas set sail every day without a rudder.
What happened to the piano and dance lessons for the kids?!
Well no, what self-respecting liberal elite would shop there? Have you ever heard of Big Box Wagyu?
To be fair, always looking out for yourself, when everything is all about you isn’t a conflict of interest…
It’s there but the order, from the bridge each day, is always the same. “Hard to port”.
We will soon require ‘Ration Stamps’ to acquire salty foods, sweet foods, cholesterol etc.
Imagine having to exchange not only cash, but Ration Stamps to get that Wendy’s Baconator. There might even be a Black Market (This is not a racial epithet) in stamps. Say you want pizza delivered and you have the money, but don’t have enough stamps. You send a friend down to ‘The Corner’ where ‘That Guy ‘ hangs out under the street lamp near the alley.
I think if MO watched her food intake closer she wouldn’t wear them ‘Belly Belts’.
When I was in public school, you could bring and eat whether you wanted from home, be it sodas or little pies or beefy burgers or whatever. Now my 3rd-grader niece reports not only are soda and snack machines kept a whole block away from their school, but teachers “pick” who’s the “healthiest eater” of the day as though to intimidate those who eat beef and even fish (yea, unreal but there IS a “sea kitten” philosophy out here), and mega kudos to the child who brings in soy chocolate milk or veggie burgers. Bloomberg and the NYC Council already want to ban all meat products from our ed system (CUNY included — like collegians aren’t adult enough to eat how YOU want!) in place of “soy meat”. It’s very disheartening to see this food police crap at work killing us with “kindness” because no one has the right to be fat or lazy or a carnivore or unGreen or whatever, and it’s all taking root in the right place like the Hitler Youth. I just wish I knew of a place to join the fight against this diet tyranny.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
These Chicago Thugs are despicable, hypocrites to their very core.
I was trying to put into words what I was thinking of Michelle Obama and the rest of these vermin, but zorro said it perfectly:
MO is still a cow.
In service to the state.
“We keep you alive to serve this ship. Row well and live.” Ben-Hur (1959)
“That’s right kids, eating animals is evil. Have some more soylent green.”
That must be an awfully big wrap–probably one that MO wants to eat–because MO’s got an extremely wide load. Last night, I saw a clip of her next to Carli Bruni. MO would be well advised to avoid that shot again.
In the meantime, where is MO stashing all her junk food goodies?
This is exactly the kind of stuff Obama wants to put a stop to by vilifying technology. If there wasn’t a Michell Malkin blog, we would never know about half of what goes on and none of the (corruption) reasons why.
Hey MO! Want a Lay’s potato chip? Bet you can’t eat just one!
I bet if you gave her a box of Bugles and a can of Easy Cheese, that would shut her bloody gob for a while!
You just know Michelle loves chitlins.
How about serving diet food for the next state dinner? All those alcoholic drinks can sure pack on the pounds too! Or maybe it’s time for the arugula diet plan.
Rambler! Do not talk about Obama’s booze or his cigs. No! No! No!
Whenever I go to Wal*mart, I always see senators, presidential candidates, Hollywood stars, oil tycoons and kings.
It’s just the kind of sacrifice we all love to see. He’s swearing off something he has no need of. Wal*mart serves the poor to middle class. Many of them are dumas democrat voters.
I’d rather see a ban on her wearing dresses that look like tablecloths.
She’s a tree-hugging liberal!
“Not like you little people, you only have to pay taxes”.
@jamesgreenidge
that is very scary stuff indeed. What if they have it all wrong? There is plenty of evidence that cholesterol and saturated fat from meat are actually very good for you, and soy is probably wrecking an entire generation of kids. Soy is really quite bad for you, what with all the goitrogens and phytoestrogens it contains. The skyrocketing rates of thyroid disease and little sissy men dressing up in women’s underwear have to be due to *something.* I feed my kid according to the Weston Price Foundation guidelines- lots of meat, tons of saturated fats, raw milk, no soy, very little grains. Pretty much an inverted USDA food pyramid. He is the healthiest, strongest kid in his class.
I am totally convinced that the diet fascists have it all backwards (except for the sugar part, I can’t say I support having soda machines in public schools) and that is after extensive research on the subject. It really scares me to think what’s coming down the pike with these totalitarians.
I’ve read where the Obama’s want the government to take control of how food is marketed. Whatever happened to their “power of persuasion”. You know, let sit down with the dictators and regimes that hate us and discuss our difference. Persuasion, gentle persuation. Why are they wanting to make it mandatory with government edict?
Oh what hypocrisy and arrogance the Obama’s show to the world with little or no consequence.
They’re building ever bigger “store houses” for their greed and self-preservation (some from questionably legal sources). They would do well to heed the verse from Luke 12:
16 And he spoke a parable to them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? 18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, You fool, this night your soul shall be required of you: then whose shall those things be, which you have provided? So is he that lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
Dang!
You beat me to it!
Excellent double-entendre!
Absolutely true, and even more to the point…
Aside from the blatant hypocricy, Dear Leader’s Lady – like everything done in this administration – is well intentioned, but totally misguided.
As Dear Lady surly knows, the width of one’s arse is directly proportional to the ammount of time spent upon it. Between TV, music, computer and video games, the average kid now spends OVER 8 HOURS / DAY using media. Wow. Just wow. So 8 hours at school, 8 hours sleep, 8 hours plugged into media leaves how much time for play/exercise? This is definitely a bigger factor than caloriies, carbs or even fat intake.
Off topic: more hispanic student mayhem…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9-BV7wUrDg
Bambi and Spud Butt (I LOVE that) will not shop at Wally World? Got Bentonville, AR shaking in their boots I bet.
So now we ask the Great Question: can the Chicago Street hustlers Bambi and Spud Butt out hustle the Arkansas White Trash Leach Bill and Shrill Hill? The fate of the universe awaits.
Have some arugula and corn dogs while waiting.
Mexican Students Knock U.S. Flag to the Ground
Pay back can be hard, huh? There is no reaching out to such thugs, criminals and reconquestas. The Reconquesta, LaRaza and the gangs are all part and parcel of the Left’s century long march to destabilize this country. So wht are you going to do about it? For me and mine…
===
An Armed Society is a polite society.
Round one went to Bambi. The Arkansas trash-two didn’t know what hit them. It’s a sad state when our leaders are such low level thugs but the sheeple think they’re gods.
Well intentioned?
I don’t think anything from socialists is well intentioned.
Mexican Students Knock U.S. Flag to the Ground
“you’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it wrong!”
translation: “This might get posted to YouTube and make us look bad!”
what a bunch of freakin’ idiots.
“I think at some point you’ve made enough money.”
Even Satan appears as an “angel of light”. This woman is pure evil.
Just what we need, someone with a fat can and married to a closet smoker who drinks too much lecturing us about being healthy.
There is nothing worse than a neo-elitist and the nouveau riche.
They want you to see how low you are, how crass. See, it’s all new to them, so they have to tout it, have to make up for lost time. Check the incandescent bulbs around her makeup mirror. Check the pricey, designer duds. Check the fancy-schmancy foods.
It’s not ‘let them eat cake’—it’s ‘you eat sawdust bread and watch me eat gateau.’
So true, spaceycakes.
More from the royal family:
Stay classy
Obama-Speak, the fusion of sophistry and Newspeak, some see it as a gift, most know it for what it is, just lies.
And now we get Horsey-Speak, dumb for the dumbest.
How do kids buy food?
The real concern here is how much damage can these clowns inflict before we manage to throw them out. Debating salt, sugar, or chlorestrol content is irrelevant, its their blatant, arrogant assault on our freedom of choice and way of life that is at issue.
Does this make MammaBama a “crop cop?”
Is there a word for this amalgam?
thus spake the succubus herself.
This change? It is simply this: Forget Camelot! Forget Carnegies,Vanderbilts, Gettys! We are the new monarchy!
A cash cow.
It’s called the Progressive Movement. Communists don’t want fascism. Fascists don’t want communism. Progressives don’t care as long as its authoritarian. It’s all socialism.
Eat what the heck you want! It’s your body. One suggestion, though, if you don’t do SOMETHING to counterbalance the excess calories, like getting off your butt and working, or being active, you’re going to gain weight. It’s simple physics. I’m thinking that MO knows that her husband’s voting base probably won’t do any of the activities mentioned above, since they’d rather live off the govt. teat. She probably feels the need to force soy milk down their throats rather than that evil dairy milk to ensure they’re healthy enough to head to the polls.
GGOOOL!
(get govt. out of our lives!)
You know, I’m more of a Target kind of guy (better quality, prettier girls), but I think I’m going to have to start shopping at Wal-Mart more now that I know BO & MO don’t support them.
Most here likely disagree, but IMHO I allow that Barry et al believe their misguided, idealistic agenda is the right thing to do. Even the megalomaniac ego trip. If he’s the messiah, his power and control of our lives is best for us, and the world. Deeply warped, egotistical, highly destructive, weird and totally creepy – but in its bizarre way well intentioned.
Ahh! Another crisis from the Obama’s. Now it’s childhood obesity.
Actually, they don’t have to do anything. With Cap N’ Tax coming and the increased use of Ethanol which will compete with land for food production, the price of food will go up so high, no one can afford to buy all of that junk food. Thus less childhood obesity.
It’s coming…
I’ll ask this here, too:
Does anyone here remember when they redefined “obesity”?
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/17/weight.guidelines/
Forgot to ask – What is the road to hell paved with…?
Hmmm…. the CDC defines children as “obese” if they are in the 95th percentile for BMI.
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/childrens_bmi/about_childrens_bmi.html#What%20is%20BMI%20percentile
Doesn’t that mean that the percentage of “obese” children is always going to be 5?
Or am I looking at this incorrectly?
5%?!
“The action plan defines the goal of ending childhood obesity in a generation as returning to a childhood obesity rate of just 5 percent by 2030, which was the rate before childhood obesity first began to rise in the late 1970s.”
http://www.letsmove.gov/taskforce_childhoodobesityrpt.html
Hey, White House, 5% is still 5%!
Mission Accomplished!
Bathroom Parity?
Shouldn’t our leaders be concerned with other things than childhood obesity and bathroom parity?
Don’t we have more urgent crisis’s to worry about – like the economic collapse that’s occuring like falling dominoes around the world?. Or illegal immigraion? Or nuclear arms in Iran and maybe Syria?
After reading MM’s post, I came close to what iamsaved is thinking. What if the grocery stores are ‘too big to fail’ and by some coincidence, the gov’t must takeover a major chain or two? Then they can regulate the amount of food available.
Every day this administration is attempting to limit our freedoms. When will the ‘everyday people’ who support BHO et al and who are still paying taxes, WAKE UP? Or should I assume the trolls on this site do not pay taxes.
Woe is us!! 2010 2112 hurry!
With the first lady involved with “what’s going in”, and not to be upstaged, the congress is determined to control “what goes out”. With the democrats, it can only come to one thing…a new tax. I can see it now. To use a bathroom, one must log in with a userID and password. Then, once in, one must select “Are you going to do No. 1 or No. 2″, (anything else may offend someone). Once selected, one sits down, then pushs “finish”. The contents are weighed and the “potty tax” is added to your monthly bill. Of course, politicians, illegals, moslems are exempt; however, totals will be kept for “statisical purposes”. So when one politician tells another politician that he’s “full of crap”, he will be speaking literally. Contents, too, could be examined to make sure you’re in line with “Ms. Obama’s guidelines”.
fat floats, so we’d best be making sinkers lest they add a fine to that tax.
What’s hysterical is that Obama’s policies are a primary contributor to obesity. Look at the obesity rate among the poor. It’s off the charts, because the foods that make you obese are the foods the poor can only afford.
You can’t buy fish and arugula when you live on food stamps.
lol. spilled my coffee reading that.
Michelle to Barry:
“Does my war on obesity make my ass look big?”
Do you have a permit to drink that coffee? Is that your 1st or 2nd or, God forbid, a 3rd cup of coffee this morning? What’s in that? FAKE COFFEE CREAMER? Uh-oh.
##clicks ballpoint pen and takes notes##
Better coffee creamer than sugar. We pay 2-3X the global rate for sugar through import controls (quotas) to kowtow to the sugar lobby and industry.
I saw Biden at Home Depot!
More like a cropo cop.
The obama’s are the most disgusting citizens to ever walk through the doors of the White House…wait a minute, one of them isn’t even a citizen.
Shouldn’t one get a small rebate for the fertilizer one is providing in order to aid in the organic greening of America? Sort of like a BS deduction…
Wait a minute! I thought No. 2 was for Spanish?! I’m so confused.
It is no wonder they loath Wal-Mart, but it is not because of the low prices; They despise them because of their ability to be efficient and do not waste money on perks for the CEOs. Wal-Mart would do a better job of running the country.
Gladz, re “too big to fail,” how many jobs would be lost if Wal-Mart closed their doors? Hmmm.
With the Govt spending $500 billion to build grocery stores in the nations. “food deserts”, the govt-run store will most likely strictly control what customers put in their baskets!
I love Honey Nut Shredded Wheat, but I most likely will be required to “weigh-in” to shop at the Govt “Healthy Mart” which will automatically print-out my shopping list! Since I need to lose about 10 pounds, I am sure that my favorite crunchy cereal will NOT be on my “approved items for purchase”!
Can cereals and snacks be frozen? I think I will purchase an “EnergyStar” freezer ASAP! I have already bought a “cheap” exercise machine, and I walk my dog an extra two blocks!
Shouldn’t I be rewarded for my “efforts” – remember liberals believe “nobody should ever FAIL”!
jb
Is Spud Butt telling me that my family and my family’s children are not now living active and healthy lives – only her intervention in their food choices that determines their existence? Here is a news flash – stay away from my kitchen and fridge Madam Big Booty and mind your own damn business.
The First
MeddlerLady needs to look after her own fat @$$ before she worries about mine. And a cocaine-snorting, hard-drinking smoker is the last person who can lecture me on my health. Bugger off.Wife just made a very nice chocolate cake. Frosting to be added shortly. We have ice cream in the freezer. Good eating to come after dinner. “Extra large slice please.”
The rules don’t apply to Chicago thugs. They can eat what ever they want, do what ever they want while telling other what to do.
IF the progressives get their way, we’ll be required to present ‘ration stamps’ for our daily portion of soylent green if this nonsense isn’t stopped. We won’t have to worry about obesity as we will all (except the ruling elites) look like Twiggy on our 600 “government approved” daily calories.
C’mon Michelle. You know she was going under cover.
And that applies to ALL Democrat leadership. Pretty much thugs everywhere they run things.
Crop Cop –
Or, maybe a Crap Cop?
Doesn’t matter.
I would bet that many tyrants, dictators, and other totalitarians believed that their agenda was the right thing to do.
Again, doesn’t matter if the agent of evil believes he is doing good.
What matters is whether in an absolute sense what the socialists are trying to force upon us is good…and it isn’t…none of it…not by a long shot.
Coffee? They’ll take this coffee cup with fake creamer and sweet and low from my old, shaky hands! I do enjoy a cup of Starbucks Americano once in awhile, sitting there using a New York Times for a coaster while openly carrying my sidearm and a Bitter Mama cap on my head.
God Bless America, pass the cream and sugar and a few of those lemon cakes please.
===
Let your sidearm be like Master Card:
Don’t Leave home without it.
Wow. First off, the jolly rancher thing is ridiculous. I’m from Texas and can attest to how crappy many of the public schools are there. Seems to me they should be more worried about teaching kids to read and write than punish kids for having a stupid piece of candy. As for Michelle Obama, well it’s pretty typical, right? My hope is for change in 2012 – get those Obama idiots out of office!
Forgive this OT linking if someone has already mentioned it, but this is potentially huge.
Why does Barack Obama have a social security number that would indicate he was a Connecticut resident?
Oh me, oh my, is it possible Obama lied? But many illegal aliens use fake SS numbers. And Baskin-Robbins? So just how many FAT Children is Bambi responsible for? Oh me, oh my.
===
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed.
As well it should be. It would be questioned in your, or my, case. And if it’s on the up & up, then no harm right?
LMAO!
Good one Cheddar.
Well isn’t that interesting?
Curiouser and curiouser.
A hundred years from now people will wonder how we could have elected this fraud.
Obviously, he was also going undercover to help Michelle expose the junk food industry.
I hope you’re correct!
The alternative is the USSA (United Socialist States of America) worshiping the One who brought them the LIE that is the “utopia” of Marxism.
GOD SAVE OUR REPUBLIC!!!
I already wonder.
I suddenly realized that my third cup yesterday was from a coffee tree that hadn’t been grown in the shade – and hadn’t been blessed by Che Guvarra. I feel so ashamed…
Breaking: President Obama Invites New British Prime Minister to Visit Washington this Summer.
Now what kind of gifts will Sock Puppet and Spud Butt present to the PM?
Witness relocation program
a Franklin Mint Princess Diana plate.
stillontheroad:
Has the new PM’s assistant sent his list of favorite movies for the DVD gift basket???
Excellent