Conservative Media Rail Against Efforts To Ensure Safe And Healthy Food
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 2nd, 2010 5:46 am by HL
Conservative Media Rail Against Efforts To Ensure Safe And Healthy Food
In recent weeks, Fox News’ Glenn Beck has railed against the proposed food safety legislation making its way through Congress, claiming it is a way for the government to “control your food” and ultimately “control you.” This is just the latest in a long line of hysterics from conservatives regarding efforts to make Americans’ food safer and healthier.
Beck Campaigned Against Food Safety Bill
Beck Called Food Safety Bill “Extraordinarily Dangerous.” On his radio show, Beck exhorted listeners to “get on the phone and stand up to your senator against the Food Safety Act,” blasting the legislation as “extraordinarily dangerous.” He went on to say: “Do not allow the food bill to pass. If you can make a phone call and get on with your senator and tell them, ‘Don’t pass this,’ please do it.” [Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program, several other pieces attacking Michelle Obama over the Let’s Move initiative. [MichelleMalkin.com, report that children “face a summer of hunger” because free or discount cafeteria meals would not be available to school children during the summer break, Limbaugh stated that “a summer off from government eating might be just the ticket” to curbing childhood obesity. He later characterized children “starving to death out there because there’s no school meal being provided” as “one of the benefits of school being out.” He also challenged Summer Food Service programs by criticizing children for not knowing how to find food. Limbaugh first suggested that children should “try your house,” and “if that doesn’t work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.” He concluded, “There’s another place if none of these options work to find food; there’s always the neighborhood dumpster.” [The Rush Limbaugh Show, billboard advertisement, which followed research into processed meat that also spurred a lawsuit against food companies to add cancer-risk warning labels on hot dog packaging. Limbaugh called the group “a bunch of wacko health freaks, health Nazis” and claimed that “if you relish hot dogs, beware.” Limbaugh went on to call the suit “absurd” and “hilarious” and warned that this is “the starting point. … [A]fter that, they’re going to go for Oreos.” [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/27/09]