Podcaster Marquisele Mercedes is a self-identified “fat liberationist.” She perfectly captures woke lunacy with her views on “resisting entrenched fat oppression,” now a formal classroom instruction for first-year medical students at UCLA.

Her articles are required reading, making it clear medical students cannot run to the nearest exit at the elite medical school. This is the course where physicians in training will learn “obesity is a slur,” and if that isn’t oppressive enough, the medical diagnosis is “used to exact violence on fat people.” Who knew?

Advancing fat acceptance serves as the epicenter of Ms. Mercedes’ liberationist world view. She will expose whoever requires outing in her “fat positivity” campaign: She isn’t coy about targeting individuals who have endorsed “fat phobia in medicine’s status quo,” naming them in such articles headlined: “The Unbearable Whiteness and Fatphobia of ‘Anti-Diet’ Dietitians.’

There is a lot to unpack in that jumbled-up heading. Mercedes is getting to the crux of the issue by pointing out whiteness (code word for white supremacists) is behind the “obesity” medical diagnosis. And dietitians (many of whom are suspiciously white) are engaging in “fat phobia.”

Mercedes likes to point out she’s immensely qualified to speak on the “intersectional span of lived fat experiences” as a black and obese woman. Her course is given tremendous latitude in a department where all instructors go to perform a “deep dive” into their “truth”: the “Structural Racism and Health Equity Department.”

It is a hotbed of Orwellian (nonsensical) double-speak. Admittedly Mercedes leads the equity-minded pack with her claim that the “ob#sity (sic) slur is used to exact violence on fat people -- particularly Black, disabled, trans, (and) poor fat people.” Again, who knew?

The ludicrous nature of her assertions is now making unwanted headlines for the elite university. “Meet the UCLA medical school ‘fat pride’ staffer whose compulsory lectures warn trainee doctors that using the world obesity is ‘violence,” read the headline in the Daily Mail. Mercedes didn’t help herself by suggesting losing weight is a “hopeless endeavor” or recommending reimagining “disability justice” for overweight individuals.

Getting lost in the shuffle are parents picking up the $43,843.00 price tag attached to their child’s first-year medical student training. (Note to reader; Tack on $12,245.00 for out-of-state students who would be also required to sit through the “fat positivity” class.)

One cannot help but wonder where are the voices of reason and credible science among the physicians on faculty at UCLA? They have been remarkably quiet to the point of questioning whether the medical faculty is made up of cowards.

One physician did have the courage to step forward, as the former dean of Harvard Medical School, regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on obesity. Jeffrey Flier, M.D., publicly labeled Mercedes’ course as “promoting extensive and dangerous misinformation.” He pointed out the perverse nature of the course also “centered on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate.”

At this critical juncture where more physicians need to voice their opposition, Dr. Flier ended with: “I found his course truly shocking.”

The terrible irony of Mercedes peddling such Orwellian dogma surfaces at a time obesity is a runaway epidemic in America. Her message to convince future doctors to “advance fat acceptance” comes at a time approximately two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (69 percent) and one out of three are obese (36 percent).

The damage Mercedes is committing is incalculable -- if she succeeds in brainwashing the future guardians of healthcare with such unscientific concepts as “fat acceptance.” Obviously, Mercedes’ morally deranged lesson plan fails to factor in the reality of health problems confronting obese patients. She can talk the talk about “racial equity” or “fat acceptance,” but none of those cozy-woke messages addresses the catastrophic physical disorders confronting obese patients.

Although not part of her woke message, Mercedes’ personal condition of carrying obese levels of extra fat (numbered among millions of patients) drastically increases her risk of cardiovascular disease (mainly heart and stroke), type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis, higher incidence of cancers, etc.

Not to be unkind, but Mercedes is a hazard to herself and definite danger to vulnerable medical students. Perhaps parents of the UCLA first-year students could qualify for a partial refund on the $43,843.00 semester fee, claiming their children have been cheated of valuable time in the classroom.

Image: Young Shanahan