{"id":9645,"date":"2011-06-03T11:49:07","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T15:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9645"},"modified":"2011-06-03T11:49:07","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T15:49:07","slug":"qotd-new-york-city-the-capital-city-of-nanny-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/03\/qotd-new-york-city-the-capital-city-of-nanny-state\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: New York City, the capital city of Nanny State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The lowest blow in City Hall\u2019s war on wicked food is its recurring efforts to ban the buying of fizzy pop with food stamps. In an initiative that could easily be titled \u2018No Coke for poor black folk\u2019, the Bloombergers have sought federal permission to prevent welfare recipients from using government cash to purchase fizzy drinks. The killjoyism of this campaign, the Scrooge-infused miserabilism of it, is astounding. City Hall has launched an advertising campaign demonising sugary drinks as one of the great evils of our time, and its internal email correspondence about the campaign, which was leaked to the New York Times<\/em>, shines a rather harsh light on the evidence-lite nastiness of the modern-day nudge-and-nanny industry. Scientific advisers emailed Thomas Farley, Bloomberg\u2019s overactive health adviser, to say that the ad\u2019s claim that drinking pop can make you gain 10 or 15 pounds is \u2018simplistic\u2019 and \u2018exaggerated\u2019. Overriding them, Farley responded: \u2018I think what people fear is getting fat, so we need some statement about what is bad about consuming so many calories.\u2019 Who needs evidence when you have fear? The ad shows human fat gurgling from the top of a can of soda. One City Hall employee could barely conceal his excitement: it is \u2018deliciously disgusting\u2019, he said in one of the emails that was leaked. <\/p>\n

\u2018Deliciously disgusting\u2019 — that just about sums up how New York\u2019s new rulers view the huddled masses of this extravagant city. In a complete reversal of the traditional democratic relationship, Bloomberg and co don\u2019t consider it their duty to mirror the desires and outlook of those who elected them. They want to remake New Yorkers as models of what they consider to be healthy citizenship. Much of this stuff comes from Thomas Farley, who is championed by both Bloomberg and the liberal media as an admirably thin jogging aficionado who believes in the power of the nudge to remould the citizenry. He is a \u2018superman\u2019, the New York Times<\/em> recently gushed, who has \u2018grasshopper-like legs\u2019 (eurgh), a result of the fact that \u2018he exercises seven days a week, loves his vegetables and has never smoked a cigarette\u2019 (boring). This fanboy fluff piece was illustrated with a picture of Farley leading a workout of not-so-thin black New Yorkers, his grasshopper-like legs just as sure a sign of his superiority as his white skin would have been 100 years ago.<\/p>\n

Brendan O’Neill, “The men who killed New York”, The Spectator<\/em><\/a>, 2011-06-04<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lowest blow in City Hall\u2019s war on wicked food is its recurring efforts to ban the buying of fizzy pop with food stamps. In an initiative that could easily be titled \u2018No Coke for poor black folk\u2019, the Bloombergers have sought federal permission to prevent welfare recipients from using government cash to purchase fizzy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,74,84,41,13],"tags":[322,321,91,244,661],"class_list":["post-9645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-food","category-government","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-nannystate","tag-nyc","tag-poverty","tag-publichealth","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2vz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9645"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9647,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9645\/revisions\/9647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}