A Farewell to Nanny Bloomberg

New Yorkers will soon be living in fat city as Gotham’s mayor, Eric Adams, prepares to sign a bill banning size discrimination. It’s a sharp departure from the tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who sought to slim the city down by force of law and shame.In 1980’s “Fatso,” Dom DeLuise plays a Brooklyn man who is struggling with his weight and who tells his brother and sister in the penultimate scene, “If I end up a fatso the rest of my life, you guys gotta love me the way I am: Fat.”The legislation seeks to mandate that sentiment under the bloated name “Prohibiting Discrimination on the Basis of a Person’s Height or Weight in Opportunities of Employment, Housing, and Access to Public Accommodations.” With infantilized legislative acronyms the norm, let’s praise its clarity.Thirty-three cosponsors in the New York City Council — seven more than are needed for passage — back the bill to add all citizens large and small to the protected class. New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey are considering similar legislation.“This was long overdue as a civil rights issue,” Democratic councilman and sponsor, Shaun Abreu, tells the Washington Post. “It’s super important that we treat everyone with the dignity and respect they deserve.”Dignity and respect for the fat were not always valued in Gotham. Mr. Bloomberg found it difficult to resist using his power to tell others how to live. It made him a natural fit for office, where many share the impulse to rule rather than govern.Mr. Bloomberg might have been more sympathetic to size. When he sought the 2020 Democratic nomination, some snickered that he was shorter than all but three presidents, but there is no height requirement for the White House.President Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was our shortest commander-in-chief, and it would have been the republic’s loss to have shut him out because he wasn’t tall enough to ride the Cyclone or because Randy Newman’s refrain that “Short people got no reason to live.”President Taft, despite his girth, served in several high offices including Chief Justice of the United States, a subject about which he often joked, responding to Yale offering a “chair in law” by saying a “sofa of law” might be more appropriate.Mr. Bloomberg’s resources couldn’t grow his stature but they did help him win two elections as mayor and overturn term limits for a third. During those twelve years, he launched “the Bloomberg Diet,” targeting the large at every wide turn.In 2005, Mr. Bloomberg prompted the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to ask the food service industry to voluntarily eliminate trans-fats. A year later, he mandated it by law.In 2006, Mr. Bloomberg required that big chain menus include calorie counts. Since diners were aware that Sbarro’s pizza and Katz’s pastrami isn’t dietetic, the effort proved futile, according to the NYU Langone Medical Center.In 2012, Mr. Bloomberg tried to ban sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces. After a legal food fight, New York’s highest court upheld the inalienable right to Big Gulps. Across the five boroughs, patriotic hearts — and stomachs — swelled with pride.Mr. Bloomberg had little patience for those who struggle with weight. “Atkins is dead,” he said after the 2004 passing of the famed dietician, Dr. Robert Atkins. “I don’t believe that bulls— that he dropped dead slipping on the sidewalk. Yeah, right! The guy was fat.”The offered apology lacked empathy. “I would never criticize somebody about their waistline,” Mr. Bloomberg told WCBS Radio. “Let me just say, ‘You are what you eat.’” Indeed, and where do the bureaucrats come off deciding what that is?The government inserting its hand into hiring decisions will be challenged as overreach, good intentions paving a West Side Highway to hell. Imagine a seven-foot jockey, four-foot fireman, or chorus line of 300-pound Rockettes.Nevertheless, the law will strike a blow against size discrimination, and it might also rein in politicians who think they know better how citizens ought to eat, and who must now love them the way they are, large or small.

A Farewell to Nanny Bloomberg

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