President Obama's pick of Alabama physician Regina Benjamin as surgeon general -- a woman whose ample figure has raised eyebrows -- comes amid news reports that obesity among black Americans is at an all time high -- and is far more problematic than in other ethnic and racial groups. How times change. In the early 1960s, socialist author Michael Harrington discussed obesity among poor Americans in his seminal book on poverty, "The Other America." Harrington, though no dietitian, explained away an odd contradiction unique to America: Why were so many poor folks fat - not skinny? It was, he wrote, because they were "fat with hunger, for that is what fat cheap foods do." Harrington's book came on the eve of President Johnson's ill-fated "War on Poverty." Some observers credit Harrington's book with having been a "driving force" behind the epic program's initiatives that changed American's culture and helped expand its deficit -- Medicaid,...(Read Full Post)