Leftovers, or why the left is fatter than the right

Politics is a beautiful and comic thing. Unfortunately, it’s ruined by the people that think it’s something worth giving a crap about, whether they’re ambitious and able enough to get involved properly, or whether they have to settle for doing dumb things like writing a blog about it instead.

There are many ways to pigeonhole these people, indeed, most of them spend a good part of their time cataloguing, categorising and cross-referencing everyone they ever meet, read an article by, or hear something about in passing.

Trying to understand all the options is, of course, a pointless task, and doing so risks being dragged into a cruel and pathetic game, where petty squabbling over the rules seems to take up most of the time.

With this in mind, we’ll stick to the two most common labels, the easiest and most efficient way to work out who it is you’re supposed to unswervingly hate and instantly disagree with at all costs and in all situations—left and right.

By sheer weight of numbers, these are the two fiercest gangs out there. But right here and now, massed ranks aren’t as important as simple, snarling, gruesome mass.

After prowling around this nasty game for long enough to be only a couple of weeks away from requiring full-time therapy, it has struck me that there’s a crude and simple way to distinguish, should you care to, your right from your left. Waistlines.

Other than those on some sort of hunger strike to show solidarity with their Somalian brethren, lefties are lardasses. At the first ugly glance, I thought this was some crazy quirk, but the more one thinks about it the more obvious it gets. Ponder about it further still, and it’s a wonder that the Labour Party conference hall doesn’t have to reinforce the flooring.

Politically speaking, lefties don’t believe in personal responsibility. It’s always someone else’s fault that they’re not paid egregious amounts of cash to run the country their way. This makes them more likely to get fat. Fatties are always making excuses for their state that never seem to include their propensity to sit around eating too much.

By contrast, righties (a word not used nearly as much; probably something to do with right-wingers not being so big on the idea of collectivisation) tend to have proper jobs, where personal appearance is important and gym membership is subsidised.

And despite the extra time being unemployed, (or being employed to clock-watch) provides members of the meaty mob, they don’t tend to spend it playing sport. They’re too busy reading Chomsky. Or just getting bored and eating to pass the time before Countdown is on.

Not having a job is also strongly linked to not having money. And as we all know, poor people think it’s cool to eat crap food. It is, of course, no cheaper to eat unhealthily, but it is often quicker. This is food that comes with a ready-made (no pun intended) easy excuse—it’s not just food, it’s fast food. Perfect for today’s discerning disgusting layabout.

But these are cheap shots. Accurate, but cheap. The real clinchers come when we lever apart the fat flaps and bellyflop into a lefty’s head.

The rotund ranks of the Red Army have a number of amusing psychological problems, the assorted perils of being professionally angry and housing a Himalayan blood pressure.

All these ‘issues’ stem from their lives being governed by an impressive array of indignations, be they moral, personal, or there just because nurturing them seemed like a good idea at the time.

The pain of living in such an unfair world makes people angry, anxious and depressed. Emotional turmoil such as this can inspire eating as a form of escapism. That, and ice-cream comforts the mood swings. As any good doctor will tell you: “emotional problems can both contribute to obesity and result from it.” It’s a vicious circle. A plump, round, vicious circle.

Minds plagued by such foul and bilious ghosts are more prone to vicious bouts of overeating or sitting around shouting at the television. They’re also more prone to thinking that Marx had a point.

Detractors from these undeniable facts, if they haven’t wobbled off to the fridge already, will probably feel like fighting back about now. Obviously physical fighting is out of the question, but a replying rant is no doubt frothing away. This spittley spindrift will almost certainly centre around one word: Americans. Lefties love to hate Americans almost as much as they love to eat American food.

“Americans are the fattest people on the planet! (outside Glasgow)”, they’ll cry, “And they’re also the most right-wing!”. Well maybe so. But that is to forget that theirs is a different culture, or rather a lack of one. American society is too base to judge each other on anything other than relative bank balances; being fat in America is just another way of showing that you can afford to be. We have eloquence for that.