My post on the media fat-fest got more hits in the last three days than any other single post ever. This fills me with despair. This blog is about many things, but its first and foremost priority was discussing how military families and members are bearing disproportionate levels of hell because of governmental stupidity and/or misdirection and indecision. Soldiers, airmen, sailors, Coasties and Marines are people, too….not Kleenex; they are more than soft, strong and disposable. And yet, for the last eight years, the media has ignored them except when they wanted to act piously patriotic and patronizing.

In some ways, it is related to the usual media coverage of America’s “fatness” issue. Both are used to fill air space when they don’t have anything else to hold over the fire of burning bullshit. The fact that they show morbidly obese images and while discussing an “epidemic” of fatness that technically included buff rock-hard body-builders to scapegoat fat as the cause of the health care issues shows where their paychecks come from, and little else. They ignore objective truth and go for the soundbite jugular.

America’s health care debacle is a combination of companies wanting to make money in obscene amounts without delivering the “product” ….be it insurance or medicines. America’s fat issue is much more related to office-bound sedentary lifestyles and the longest working hours in the Western World than Americans being lazy and prone to overeating. And the food industry bears responsibility, too: they produce ever more cheaply made food items for convenience of over-worked, time-short families and fill in with metabolism wrecking crap (corn syrup and MSG derivatives) instead of using real food.

And America would be less likely to fall for these sorts of sensationalized media feeding frenzies if there wasn’t the idea out there that the main event in every life is sexual attractiveness. “Everybody must be HOT” reasoning is possibly more damaging than the 60’s rational that “everybody must get stoned.” Though, the resultant ‘munchies’ might not be such a good thing for the must be Hot crowd.

Every person I have ever had an argument with about why they think it is ok to give fat people a bad time, sooner or later it comes down to one thing. Once you point out that it IS possible to be healthy at weights the medical crowd calls obese, then they go “But LOOK at them!” Right. Look at them.

How is this different that “looking” at Afro-Americans in that “easy to spot, easy to blame” sense that is the only focal length in the KKK magnifying lenses? How is it different that Germans in the 1930’s buying anti-Semetism as the fix-all for their horrid economic woes? How is it different than South Africa in the apartheid years treating natives like unruly, possibly rabid animals? How is it different than Israel deciding all Palestinians are devoid of rights because of the actions of a minority?

How does finding bullshit statistics to back up scapegoating a very visible minority for problems that plague the entire nations FIX the issue? How does it do more than obfuscate the real reasons, to which exist REAL fixes?
How do we STOP it?

First off, stop thinking of people as nothing but bodies. We humans are not just walking meat. Your mothers used to teach this by saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” (Unless it is Silver Ravenwolf….then yes, judge the cheese as it stands!) People are so much more than their bodies; and even if they were not—why are your standards so limiting? I live with two photographers; trust me when I say homogenized vanity gets bloody boring!

Americans like labels. Nerd. Geek. Egghead. Stoner. Fundy. Loser. Jock. Bitch. Asshole. Fatso. And I am skipping the entire ethnic schtick, ok? We both know you have heard them all. All of them have one thing in common. They each apply to ONE ASPECT of the entire person. Watch what you wish for, if you fall for buying into dismissing a person as a Fatso: there is surely a sign out there for you, too. You just might find yourself dismissed when you need attention most.

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