How ironic.  The proponents of government health care, and government regulatory authority over things like fast food and tobacco to ensure that Americans live government-approved lives, think that a nomination for our nation’s top doctor by our liberal President is too fat.

Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, Obama’s pick for the next surgeon general, was hailed as a MacArthur Grant genius who had championed the poor at a medical clinic she set up in Katrina-ravaged Alabama.

But the full-figured African-American nominee is also under fire for being overweight in a nation where 34 percent of all Americans aged 20 and over are obese.

Critics and supporters across the blogsphere have commented on photos of Benjamin’s round cheeks, saying she sends the wrong message as the public face of America’s health initiatives.

But others support the 52-year-old founder and CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, citing new research that shows you cannot always judge a book by its cover when it comes to obesity.

This is such an interesting debate for our country to be having in this age of nanny-statism.  While we pour tens of billions of dollars into government efforts to manage or manipulate our health lifestyles, and as we debate a government health care plan that would essentially put the government in charge of the care we get, here we have the proponents of those things claiming that a woman is too fat to serve in the government.

What’s particularly interesting is that these are the very same people who tell us that they don’t want to really manage our lives.  They’d never, ever do something like deny us government health care because of our weight.  And they’d never demand that we adhere to some sort of government standards for our health and lifestyles.

And yet here they are, lambasting someone who appears to be a perfectly competent doctor as unqualified because of her weight.