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   From: rander3127@gmail.com   
      
   Ford and Duffy are Sows at the Trough.   Some say they don't use their   
   hands when they eat.   
      
   It’s the elephant in Canada’s political scandal room.   
      
   No one seems to want to talk about the idea that the two men occupying the   
   bulk of the political storms in Ottawa and Toronto are being discriminated   
   against because they are, for want of a better word, fat.   
      
   Actually, there may be no better word than “fat” to describe both the   
   physical stature and moral self-entitlement of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and   
   Imaginary P.E.I. senator Mike Duffy.   
      
   As a word, “fat” carries a lot more weight than “obese” or “scale-   
   challenged” or “laterally excessive” or “super-sized” or “gravitationally   
   disproportionate”.   
      
   And when dealing with politicians, no political correctness is required.   
      
   But back to discrimination. It’s clear to me that both Ford and Duffy   
   (whose name bears an unfortunate similarity to the brand of beer guzzled by   
   paunchy characters on The Simpsons) are being given a bad rap sheet in no   
   large part because of their bodily bulk.   
      
   Consider Senator Pamela Wallin, another of those big-name former media   
   types appointed to the upper house by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to   
   fund-raise for the Conservative party on the taxpayers’ tab.   
      
   She stands accused of living off the fat of the land in roughly the same   
   way as Duffy has. But almost all we hear about is the Duffster. He’s the   
   one whose fat is in the fire, so to speak.   
      
   I’d say that’s because Wallin is a fairly trim and attractive older woman,   
   especially alluring to men of a certain indiscriminate age.   
      
   And who is Ford stacked up against as a future electoral foe? It’s tiny   
   Olivia Chow, who despite her name has a physique that suggests she has   
   subsisted on raw vegetables and fat-free yogurt for the past few decades.   
      
   Clearly society discriminates against fat men regardless of their deeds and   
   talents.   
      
   Take Elvis, for example. We loved him slender, so when impersonators play   
   the legendary singer for laughs, its the Elvis bursting out of a sequined   
   jumpsuit and changing TV channels with a handgun.   
      
   Ford and Duffy might lean on the archetype of the “jolly fat man” to   
   restore their images. But the most famous jolly fat man, Santa, distributed   
   largesse from a sled rather than scarfing it up from the taxpayers’ trough.   
   And when he wanted to rise high up the chimney, it was the finger beside   
   his nose and not the pipe in his mouth that did the deed.   
      
   Sadly, in real life jolly fat men are a rarity. Scientists have proved it,   
   using a mental health questionnaire and the body mass index.   
      
   University of Texas researcher Robert E. Roberts (perhaps known to his   
   friends at the swimming pool as Bobby Bobs) was able to announce   
   definitively that, “In no case did we observe better mental health among   
   the obese. In sum, the obese were not more jolly.”   
      
   True, there are an awful lot of fat funnymen out there. But it’s often   
   said, especially by columnists struggling to meet deadline, that humour   
   comes from pain. They don’t call them punch lines for nothing.   
      
   The best example might be roly-poly Curly Howard of The Three Stooges, who   
   had his eyes poked out at least 72 times by Moe in order to make audiences   
   laugh.   
      
   Another early and portly film comedian, W.C. Fields, cruelly schemed   
   against child stars, playing proxy for many a parent with infanticidal   
   fantasies, but generally was bested by the little bleeps.   
      
   Modern-day corpulent comic creations include Fat Bastard from Mike Myers’   
   Austin Powers films. Cruel and cannibalistic, his greatest sin might be his   
   Scottish accent.   
      
   Senator Duffy is known to be a wit, as the prolific photo of him toasting   
   the world with white wine suggests.   
      
   But because of the crimes he stands accused of, the comic creature Duffy   
   brings to my mind is Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote, who vomited on those who   
   fed him and then exploded after consuming one tiny mint, “one thin waffer,”   
   too many. A $90,000 wafer.   
      
   As for Ford, his good-timey grin and omnipresent stain on the centre of his   
   shirt give him an unfortunate frat-boy resemblance to comedians Chris   
   Farley and John Belushi. Their fatal flaw was a fondness for cocaine   
   concoctions. Do tell.   
      
   Some full-figured folk have forklifted their way into high offices, such as   
   presidencies and prime ministries. But generally politics frowns on fat   
   leaders. Except in North Korea, where overweight is compulsory.   
      
   It’s been said that Winston Churchill might not have been able to convince   
   wartime Britons that their finest hour was only a few years of beach-   
   fighting away had he been gaunt.   
      
   But these days “being fat is associate with addiction and dropping dead,”   
   as Simon Doonan noted in a Slate article last year. “If Winnie were around   
   today he would undoubtedly be found hula-hooping frantically outside Number   
   10, while guzzling Activia.”   
      
   William Shakespeare had Julius Caesar vowing to surround himself with “fat,   
   sleek-headed men” for safety’s sake, then making an unfortunate exception   
   for Cassius with his “lean and hungry look.” The point Julie was making,   
   and later felt between his ribs: “Such men are dangerous.”   
      
   But Shakespeare is famously inconsistent. The bard’s favourite fat man,   
   Falstaff, has a cruel and dishonest streak, insulting his friends, taking   
   bribes, cheating the government by recruiting soldiers not fit for battle   
   and stabbing a corpse to try to get a reward from the king.   
      
   So neither history nor comedy is especially kind to overstuffed politicos.   
      
   Neither is the Bible. I’ll let the first word cast the last aspersion on   
   those two men, Ford and Duffy, who have been looming larger than life.   
      
   “They have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of evil.”   
   s in deeds of evil.”   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)