link Gabby Douglas to Oprah: I was bullied, called slave during early gymnastics training in Virginia – NY Daily News.
There is a massive reality show potential here for anyone with the foresight to come up with it. If only I had some connection to the reality TV show business. The title of this new show will be coined, “The Special One”. The premise of this show will be the search for that one individual who has lived life since birth without ever having had slights of any kind hurled against him. No fatso, stinky, goofball, slowpoke, or dummy insults. No slurs on his race, his sex, his sexual orientation, his physical deformity, his gap toothed grin, his slowness of wit, his lack of physical co-ordination or his Monty Python silly walk. No one has ever commented on his height, or lack of height, his hair, or lack thereof. He has never been the subject of ridicule for his lisp, his regional drawl, his double jointed thumbs, his unibrow or his lack of taste in clothing.
This person will have lived under the most benign of conditions having nothing but effusive praise and syrupy accolades heaped upon him his entire life. Of course, this person will have achieved unbridled success in every thing he has touched, have self esteem like Muhammad Ali at a pre fight weigh in, is a friend to thousands and admired by all. This person has never felt the sting of rejection, never been the subject of ostracism or profiling. This person will have never shed a tear because someone didn’t valentine him when he was 6 or because he was picked last for a game of scrub. This person has only known rainbows and moonbeams and hears flutes and violins upon entering a room.
Can’t wait to see who the winner is.
link Americans Concerns About Obesity Soar, Surpass Smoking.
Really? One of the things that weighs most heavily on people’s minds is obesity? How about stupidity? How is it that people are made to feel insecure about their physical appearance yet not be ashamed at exposing their lack of intelligence, wit or understanding (otherwise known as stupidity) for the world to see?
We keep hearing about the ‘epidemic of obesity’ as if it were scabies at a frat house. It has been estimated that $40 billion dollars per year is spent on various and sundry diet programs including Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, The Atkins Diet, The South Seas Diet, The Watermelon diet, etc etc. Who knows how someone counts this, but if you include the entire fitness industry, it adds up to some real moolah. So it’s a little disingenuous for people to moan about an epidemic when in fact the livelihoods of millions of people depend on making people feel guilty about having that extra piece of cheesecake.
Perhaps we should blame food companies for making their products taste so good. Evil corporations. Isn’t that the main point of every creature on earth? To get easy access to food? In most of today’s societies, access to food is no longer an issue, so one of the main problems facing mankind has essentially been eliminated. Isn’t that success? Somehow this “obsession” has gotten to the point where people are willing to have a tax imposed on themselves for being fat! Fat tax article They are essentially admitting that instead of controlling themselves, they’d rather pass money to the government than pass on that second helping of lasagna.
If people are worried about their physical profile, that’s a first world problem, sort of like worrying about whether your upstairs maid gets along with the downstairs maid. Oddly, we never hear of this calamity in the Sudan. The only reason this ‘concern’ even exists is because of the media and fashion business. As we all know, the fashion business exists because of their pandering to people’s natural insecurities. They somehow portray the illusion that a 40 year old person can have the idealized body of a 17 year old model if only they wore the same capri pants. As if Rosie can look like Giselle.
We’d be far better off trying to eliminate stupidity. We have a far larger problem of billions and billions of dollars being spent on schools to turn out functional illiterates. If you ask me, I’d rather be living in a society of zaftigs than one of zombies.