I’m trying very hard to give a good chicken butt who the Surgeon General is, though it may wind up being a futile battle. Yes, the SG is technically in charge of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and has some vaguely defined duties in the event of a health emergency, and they can put warning labels on your smoke and your booze. But they never really seem to do very much.

Still the office exists, and as with any good governmental function, it needs to be filled, I suppose. So now Regina Benjamin has been nominated for the post and people are asking if she’s 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.

Dr. Benjamin appears to be what my wife often refers to as “a juicy girl.” (Sorry, I don’t actually know the origins of the phrase off hand.) She does not, however, appear to be “morbidly obese,” though I have no idea where we draw the lines on that anymore. Perhaps we could just say she’s “big boned.”

Dear America. Please go worry about something important, rather than whether or not the new Surgeon General looks hawt in a bikini. Trust me, there’s lots of things going on in Washington right now which are worthy of a full blown panic. This isn’t going to impact your life. The only former Surgeon General I can name off the top of my head is C. Everet Coop, and that’s only because he does those Life Alert advertisements now. Leave the woman alone.