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Clinton to Youth: Eat Like Me and <em>Die</em> (With Classic Video!)
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 18, 2010
Modified Feb 18, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 18, 2010
Modified Feb 18, 2010
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Former president Bill Clinton has a lot of admirable qualities—his charisma, his intelligence, his saxophone... his role in facilitating CIA gun and cocaine smuggling into Arkansas (says Penthouse!). But after dodging a heart attack last week, Bubba has made his first remarks to the media, and used the opportunity to warn the youth of America not to emulate his unhealthy eating habits.
"I'm very, very lucky that I didn't have a much worse set of circumstances," Clinton said Wednesday at his office in Harlem, where he held a press conference to discuss a partnership between the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation. "Everybody knows I went to the doctor last week for a little tune up on my heart... I'm glad to be back to work." Number 42 went on to explain that his heart problems—he had a quadruple bypass in 2004—can be traced directly back to his boyhood fast food diet:
The root causes were the habits I acquired in my childhood, mostly the way I ate and the way it interacted with my own biology and propensity to produce bad cholesterol. I ate too much fried food, too much ice cream, too much everything. Many, many young people are facing exactly the same circumstances I did unless they change their eating and exercise habits. They may or may not be as lucky as I was.
And who could be as lucky as The Comeback Kid, who spent his life gorging on delicious yet unhealthy food and lived to tell the tale (so far). For reference, find below the timeless SNL sketch from the early '90s, showing presidential candidate Clinton, played to perfection by Phil Hartman, eating his way through a McDonald's. Funny/sad how Clinton outlived Hartman, and how SNL used to be pretty consistently hilarious!
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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