Mayoral Fail

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants the citizens of his metropolis to be healthier. So he has proposed a maximum size limit on how big of a cup a restaurant can use when it serves you a soda drink sweetened with sugar.

I had no idea that New York City had solved its murder problems, homelessness problem, prostitution, drug abuse, parking, infrastructure repair and so on. But they must have for the mayor of the city to spend his time telling people how much soda they can drink.

Diane Sawyer interviewed the mayor and he noted that he woke up the morning after his announcement to headlines calling him things like "Mayor Nanny." He told her that he didn't know if those were supposed to be derogatory terms. Well, that's because you've got a full-on steam of stupid usually reserved for federal-level politicians, Mikey. Those who refer to you as a nanny are NOT complimenting you. They -- like nearly everyone else who still has enough functioning neurons to rub together and spark what we colorfully call "thoughts" -- think you're playing solitaire with two cards. You're a drawerful of dull knives, a sack of hammers, a box full of crayons with no points. You'd be more than a few fries short of a Happy Meal except you think fried potatoes are the greatest crisis your city faces -- or you did until someone read you the calorie count of a glass of soda.

The mayor says he's concerned with the fact that large portions of sodas cause obesity, and he believes that if people have to get their 32 ounces of Coke in two glasses instead of one, they'll see the error of their sugar-snortin' ways. Here's a word you may have overlooked in your headlong dash to tell people what to do, Mr. Mayor: Refill. A lot of restaurants have developed a quaint little custom of having their wait staff ask you if you'd like more to drink if your glass dips below a certain level. Of course, if you tip like you govern, the majority of waiters you've had may have skipped that extra.

I don't know what the mayor's actual concern is, but I don't believe he cares about health the way he says he does, because of what his proposal leaves out. It does not cover diet drinks (troubles with aspartame? Just a rumor!), alcoholic beverages (and you know, one of the things the body turns the alcohol into when it digests those drinks is...sugar) or that pinnacle of slimming slurping, the milkshake. Yup. You won't be able to have 20 ounces of Mountain Dew in a single glass, but you can have a gallon of whipped ice cream as often as your colon will let you.

Nor does the ban affect convenience stores, so if you want to buy a liter of creme soda and sit at your restaurant table and swig it straight out of the bottle and they want to let you, Mikey's Soda Patrol will have to fume in busybody frustration.

I usually think Diane Sawyer is a pretty good interviewer, but she gets downgraded here for not asking the obvious question: "Mr. Mayor, do you view yourself as a cretin or as a full-fledged moron?"