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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (6460)	6/20/2003 12:31:30 AM
From: Solon	Respond to of 7720

HA! Trees may be entitled to equal rights, but they will just have to get in line behind the mice...

To: average joe who wrote (6460)	6/20/2003 6:52:04 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

I like your poem. I've clipped and saved it. A few weeks ago I watched the question of fat discrimination play out in relation to American Idol. For those who did not watch the show, which I think is everyone here but me, one of the contestants, Ruben, the winner, is a huge man, somewhere near 400 pounds I'd say. He's a pleasant, down-home sort of guy with a lovely, soulful voice. Historically, one of the judges on the show, Simon, has been really nasty to contestants who were overweight. He made an issue of it with three somewhat fleshy contestants this round, but never said a word about Ruben, his favorite. Ruben's weight was clearly to the point where it inhibited his activities. He sweated furiously during shows, was frequently out of breath, and was very constrained in the choreographed group numbers. In the flurry of media activity surrounding the show, there were a couple of columnists who expressed concern that his extreme weight would make the furious activity of the show winner problematic for Ruben. Others mentioned it in the context of Ruben's apparent bias. Anyway, one columnist got a lot of grief for his column from readers who called him a fat bigot. He wrote a follow-up column about it which included some of the responses he had gotten from readers. I found the whole thing fascinating. Interestingly, the columnist is African American, which sparked my observations about parallels between the way people deal with fat bigotry and race bigotry. In each case, you have, of course, bigots on one end of the spectrum. And on the other end you have the overly sensitive, the professional victims, and the bleeding hearts. In each case you have the question of how much of the victim's disadvantage is immutable and how much is his own doing. And in each case you have lots of people yacking and few people listening and understanding. It should be interesting to see how the obesity issue plays out politically over time.