But with a couple of exceptions, I don't think our supervisors are that dumb. No, I'm fairly certain that fat discrimination laws were adopted in a fit of political pandering, of a type that has become a tradition in San Francisco. You remember ...
Make politics clean -- outlaw lying!
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"Compliance Guidelines -- To Prohibit
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These pandering campaigns would be entertaining if they were merely stupidly ineffectual, which they have usually been as regards stated intent. The minute these proposals hit the newspapers, thinking people knew: that regulating banks is a federal prerogative, and local attempts to do the same would be struck down instantly in court; that San Francisco's contracting policies were unlikely to unseat the Burmese military dictatorship, despicable though it may be; and that lying, in a political context, is almost impossible to define, and therefore even harder to curb legally, given the stringent constitutional protections that exist for political speech.
But the pandering has negative effects that go beyond simply wasting government time and resources on meaningless symbolism. The pandering focuses attention on peripheral matters, allowing genuinely important policy issues to go unattended. At least as important, these pander-proposals give cover, not just here but around the nation, to those who prefer the government to be corrupt and social inequity to go unaddressed, because limiting the corruption and addressing the inequity would change a system from which they profit.
So don't take this column as a rant against the obese -- heavy folks are fine by me, really -- or a call for height and weight discrimination laws to be rescinded. Take it, instead, as a reminder to the big fish of the S.F. progressive movement that when they focus on the trials of the obese and the shocking (shocking!) problem of political lying, they allow themselves to be credibly portrayed as ignoring our housing emergency and the tragedy of San Francisco homelessness. Fat-discrimination and lying laws may play well to the small choir of left-orthodoxy fanatics who would have all San Franciscans be of one, and only one, mind on an increasingly long and silly list of supposedly progressive tenets. But to the extent that the officeholders who have progressive ideals allow themselves to look silly in the wider electoral world, they will ultimately invigorate the legions of heartless and greedy sharks that are always cruising, back and forth, just off the beach, waiting for someone to wade one step too far into the political surf.
