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Michael Bloomberg Fires Back at Mississippi

This could be a very entertaining feud!

by
Adam Chandler
March 15, 2013
(Reuters)
(Reuters)

Yesterday, we talked about what’s informally being called the “anti-Bloomberg bill,” which bans the cities and counties of Mississippi from regulating health policy.

Of course, the jab here is that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought impose a soda ban on large, sugary drinks and had his initiative knocked down by a state judge earlier this week. The Mississippi bill is expected to be signed into law shortly and, in response to the bill, Michael Bloomberg had some words.

“You gotta love it. In the state with the highest rate of obesity, they pass a law that says you can’t do anything about it,” Bloomberg said during his weekly radio interview. The mayor said the Southern state’s action was “so inconceivable” that if someone wrote a movie about it, they’d never find a producer. “It would be so ridiculous.”

Okay, so it wasn’t the slickest of burns. I might have gone with something about how even the name Mississippi is kind of fat. But if there’s one thing that this country needs right now, it’s absolutely a Michael Bloomberg-Mississippi feud.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.