CHICAGO (CBS) – I’m not big on hot weather, but one good thing about it is the big bellies I see on the beach that remind me to be careful about what I eat, because being overweight causes heart disease.

Approximately 42,000 people die of heart disease each year in Illinois; 25 percent of our children under age 11 obese.

Obesity is a national crisis, which is why New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to restrict the sale of super-size cups of soda, trying to save lives.

And he’s being clobbered for it by the soda industry in an ad in the New York Times, depicting Bloomberg dressed in a skirt, with the caption “New Yorkers need a Mayor, not a Nanny.”

Bloomberg is being ridiculed, and scorned, and taunted for doing what he ought to do: telling New York what to do to protect its children.

That is what Mayor Rahm Emanuel ought to do: tell Chicago what to do to protect our children, who very seriously need protection.