Saving Saint Damion

[John Greg]

In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks was set with the task of trying to save Private Matt Damon from the cruel realities of war. In this thread, we should set ourselves the task of trying to save Saint Damion from the cruel realities of, well, reality.

We can save Saint Damion by pointing out some of the realities of reality that Damion should really avoid, so as to save himself from suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous reality, and take arms against a sea of satire, and by opposing, end it: the uncomfortableness of an ethical imbalance and the gormless discomfort of moral goiters.

I'll start things off, and the rest of you anti-ethicists, Godwinettes, and just plain cruel, mean, evil, wicked nasty fat-, body-, face-, and life-shamers can join in with your own suggestions.

Saint Damion should avidly avoid:

The movie, In Bruges. I think Saint Damion should avoid this excellent movie altogether. It involves jokes that are made at the expense of fat people, Americans, midgets, tourists, dwarfs, sociopathic gangsters, and hired killers. While it is a brilliant movie, it would better serve Damion's (and I am stealing this from some other Pitter who used it, or something like it) raisin debtors by owning up to its own hatefulness and the severe damage it must surely cause all fat people, Americans, midgets, tourists, dwarfs, sociopathic gangsters, and hired killers, by removing all jokes that are made at their expense. Of course, in so doing, it would remove all raisin debtors for the movie's existence, but, heck, the world is full of movies, so what does the loss of one particularily good one cost anyway, especially in light of the goal of making the world a better place for saintly Damions and all who sail in them?

OK, over to youse folks. Cough 'em up.

[Skep tickle]

I am not aiming to pick on d4m10n; I've met him, enjoyed conversation IRL and on twitter with him, though am a bit puzzled over the approach he has taken in the past few months.

But, to add a show: IMO, any person who claims that fat shaming is horrible and must be spoken against should protest the US TV show The Biggest Loser. It's now in season 15, #1 among TV viewers age 18-49.

While it's possible to look at the show as a heart-warming uplifting show in which people struggle valiantly to become healthier, the focus is on the contestants' weight and fatness. Take a look at some of the photos at the link above. People are dressed to show off their bare stomachs, stand on a platform & have their fatness broadcast to millions (and recorded for posterity), have their weight displayed on a big digital display (along with their week to week change), and get harangued by at least some of the trainers.

The winners are those who lose the most ("the biggest losers", yuck yuck). The real losers are the ones who don't lose weight, including those who can't, whose failure is displayed both numerically and visually shaming them publicly before millions of watchers. Thin is good, fat is bad. Thin is success, fat is failure. Etc. Besides which, it seems like no rate of weight loss is too fast, even if it seems medically unhealthy. (I say that with incomplete information; I've only watched the show once.)

Others have certainly called The Biggest Loser fat-shaming before me; just google those terms together.

[John Greg]

That sounds revolting.

I stopped watching TV almost 20 years ago, mainly because it became apparent, even way back then, that TV was sinking to levels of truly disgusting behaviour that, in my opinion, is nothing short of obscene and unwatchable.

Ya, well, it is probably stupid and juvenile of me to try and start this Damion-shaming thread. But his behaviour is so bizarre, even on his own blog, where he is clearly either seriously dysfunctional, or just trolling his own blog, that, well, I couldn't resist it.

It would seem that no one wants to play, which is probably a good thing.