Dear Dick Cavett,Of all the intolerant, media-sanctioned sizism I've read (and I've read plenty, this week alone), your "Is Bigger Really Better?" in today's New York Times has got to be the most juvenile. Packed with pinky-out pontification and peppered with racism, for good measure. Strasbourg goose, indeed.
Dick.
Drunk driving claims far more nonparticipating victims than does obesity, but if you banned those with DUI convictions from appearing on television, prime time would be filled with nothing but windblown tumbleweeds. And out-of-touch irrelevants like you.
If Orson Welles was alive, he'd kick your quivering white ass. Buddy Hackett, Beverly Sills, and Jackie Gleason would patiently wait their turn.
You doddering diminutive.
19 comments:
Whoa! For those without an account at NYT, here it is:
Is Bigger Really Better?
by Dick Cavett
for The New York Times
It was only a few years ago that I first noticed an obese person in a commercial. Then there were more. Now, like obesity itself, it has gotten out of hand.
This disturbs me in ways I haven’t fully figured out, and in a few that Ihave. The obese man on the orange bench, the fat pharmacist in the drugstore commercial and all of the other heavily larded folks being used tosell products distresses me. Mostly because the message in all this is that its O.K. to be fat.
As we know, it isn’t.
It isn’t, mainly, because of the attendant health issues. The risk of several cancers, crippling damage to joints, heart attack, stroke, diabetes and sleep apnea — a much under-publicized life-threatener — defies sense.
So why is it so prevalent in our culture and in the media? Could it be that the ad agencies — always with our best interests at heart, of course — are making use of the appalling fact that obesity in the United States has doubled and rapidly redoubled to the point where one-third of the population is imperiled by gross poundage? Fat people, the commercial-makers may feel, are entitled to representation. What’s wrong with that?
Everything.
Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed. I’ve done shows with Ku Klux Klansmen, Mafiosi and Nazis (both domestic and Third Reich). Despite my being not overly cordial to them, always a nagging little voice in me wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with having them on at all. Was it somehow a tacit endorsement, just putting them on television? After all, there’s that sign in the variety store that sits atop the pyramid of schlocky plastic vegetable slicers: AS SEEN ON TV! Just being seen on the tube . . . it’s gotta be good.
Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy’s show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen. I guess a nice person would not point out that Jerry Springer’s guests and audience frequently bring to mind (particularly for those of us from western states) a herd of heifers. But there it is. I’ll try to be nicer.
Television comedy, in particular, has become an equal opportunity employer of the gigantic. It seems as if nearly every sitcom has a requisite fat, sassy black lady (or man) or a fat, avuncular white Uncle Jim large enough to absorb the scripted fat jokes. I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn’t include someone the size of the Hindenburg. Frequently the comic is black or Hispanic — the two groups, according to many studies, currently bearing the brunt of the obesity plague.
These comics’ routines invariably center on their weight vs. their erotic life — the abundance of former and lack of the latter. When being huge is a jokester’s bread and butter, remaining so becomes a professional necessity as well as an encouragement to over-inflated young would-be performers eager to emulate them. They see that fat is funny. And funny is money.
(Fat jokes, of course, have long been standard in comedy: When you get on a scale, does a card come out saying, ‘Please, one at a time?’” Long ago, that sort of thing risked offending only a few.)
When I was a kid in Nebraska and the eagerly anticipated (and wildly politically incorrect) freak show came to town, it starred such favorites as The Cone-Headed Savages; He Has Two Noses; Alzora, The Turtle Girl (if you’re still out there, Alzora, please write to me!); The Pig Man; and, for an extra quarter and behind curtains, something called Is It A Man Or A Woman?
And, of course, the ever-popular Fat Lady. Dora, in this case. The idea that Dora’s rotundity would be a novelty rare enough that one paid to look at it is sad. (Today, in a two-block walk, I can safely predict seeing at least one woman who could put Dora out of business.)
In the playground, did you too have the nasty little ditty beginning, “Fatty, Fatty, Two by Four”? In Nebraska, we had the song – but no one to torment with it. No one was fat. Sounds incredible now, doesn’t it, in the midst of our current tragedy.
More recently I found myself in Tiananmen Square, and a Chinese guide pointed to a bus unloading what seemed to be half a mile away.
Americans, he said.
How can you tell from here? I naively asked.
Fannies, he said, making the wide gesture with both hands.
Every summer Irish girls come to Montauk, L. I., to work. Some years ago, when obesity was getting into surge mode, I asked two of them if they noticed any difference in America from year to year. They sort of giggled and conferred, not sure if they should say it, but then they did: “You are so huge!”
But it’s no longer true that Europe and Asia can point to America and smugly sing, “Fatty, Fatty.” We’ve exported our revolution with our fast-food chains. Japan now has obese children for the first time in its thousand-year history. Mad for anything American, young Japanese have made McDonald’s (charmingly: “ma-ca-do-naru-doz”) their second – if not first – home, partaking there more than once a day.
But fear not: we still have the lead. And in a future column, perhaps, we can explore just why an ever-growing portion of America’s population treats the body as if it were a Strasbourg goose.
Thx anonymous!
But I think I'm unable to read it in its entirety...
Bigotry in its purest form!
Like too many people before you, you are confusing being fat and being obese! Being obese mean your poor diet and lack of exercise, which will cause all the associated health risk, and may cause excess weight. And, yes it unhealthy to be in that category.
However, being fat just mean that you are carrying some excess weight regard less of your diet and the amount of exercise you do!
Despite common belief there is little or no know health issues for these people.
And, I can't believe that anything you see on the TV, is an endorsement for it. If that is was the case, the History channel could be accused with endorsing the Nazis, everything time they do a WWII documentary.
And, finally, what give you the right to choose who is entitled to representation in this country?
What a dick.
What has happened to this once insightful man? When did he become such a clenched-jaw asshole? This tirade makes him sound like a pee stained geezer, waving his cane and cursing at passersby on the street.
Your bit about the fat old interviewees beating him up sounded good though. I'd pay to see it.
"Like too many people before you, you are confusing being fat and being obese! Being obese mean your poor diet and lack of exercise, which will cause all the associated health risk, and may cause excess weight. And, yes it unhealthy to be in that category."
While Mr Cavett's article is completely outrageous, your statement is another example of bigotry and stereotyping come to call. Guess what? I eat natural foods, limit my salt/sugar intake, and walk daily. My blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol are all within normal to optimal ranges, my joints all work very well....yet I am what the medical community labels morbidly obese. I *choose* to be this size, because I refuse to live my life struggling to fit into a mold that society has set for me. I am what I am, and I attempt to live my life without imposing myself on those around me in negative ways. Yet, people like Mr Cavett - fat bigots who can't see past the end of their noses- look at people like me and immediately put me into the category of "Unhealthy, unattractive fat people who are a scourge on our society". Yes, there are fat people who are unhealthy and should lose weight. There are also skinny people who should be healthier, too. Mr Cavett himself struggles with mental health issues - should we marginalize him for that? When you spend so much effort attempting to put people in categories to determine their value in society, ESPECIALLY when you make these determinations based on appearance, you show more about yourself than those you are examining. Mr Cavett, you should spend a little more time in self-reflection and educating yourself, and less time casting around judgments such at this.
"Mr Cavett himself struggles with mental health issues - should we marginalize him for that?"
I'm thinking... maybe. Or at least get him to push away from the Smith Corona.
Arright, not really. But I agree, Anonymous Number Three or Four. Cavett could do with some schooling. He's apparently become Grandpa Griffin from Family Guy.
I'm embarrassed to be white.
Dick appeared briefly on Turner Classic Movies last winter to reshow some of his great old circa-1970 interviews with Groucho and Bette Davis. He's ignoring something he well knows, that fat announcers and bandleaders(Don Wilson, John Scott Trotter) were prized on old radio shows, even if listeners couldn't see them, because the live audience could always be relied upon to guffaw on cue at a quick fat-zinger when the writing wasn't so hot... Cavett was flawlessly hip in his day, but he's a relic from the Twiggy era...
True, Ned. Cavett was once the poster child for erudition and finger-on-the-pulse-ness. Yet… now. I feel as if I’ve just seen Jimmy Carter on YouTube telling a Red Foxx Party Record joke.
While i have trouble with the prospect of Jimmy Carter telling a (late, great) Red Foxx Party Record joke as anything other than delightful, i have to ask...
will you marry me?
Let me assure you that i am downright MORTIFIED to be white.
Mortifiedly yours,
dr. hewmann
To say I'm quite fond of you, Dr. Hewmann, would be an understatement. And to say I wish you'd stop asking me to marry you would be a lie. But I must again refuse your lovely and touching proposal.
I'm up for a doughnut run, though. And we're low on bourbon. Hurry back.
Now, weren't we talking about dick?
I remain,
Ms. Pleasure Pie
If its not one thing its another.
Makes me wish that NAAFA would get its act together.
Oh yeah, (D)dick.
That pretty much bummed me out, so i didn't bring it up.
(or whatever...)
Next thing you know, it'll be Bill Moyers.
Most disheartening.
TV, schmeevee.
I'm late to this 'un, but as some one who once liked Rick Moranis' parody of a self-centered Dick Cavett more than the man himself, I can't say I'm entirely surprised . . .
I hate to be a drag but i got a problem, here.
I'm not writing to rag on you for not updating this site since 1966.
I'm totally cool with that.
I've never been all that attracted to achievement-driven women and the laid-back thing works for me real well.
Also, i respect your hedging your bets with my repeated and nixed marriage proposals.
My problem lies in the fact that i've got our major anniversaries pretty well mapped out.
I see our 50th being spent in Paris (might the words, "creme sauce" have some attraction?) and, even though i'm feeling pretty good these days, if you agreed to this proposition today, i'll be a hundred and seven when that rolls around.
No pressure, but we really need to get movin' on this thing.
I appreciate your adorably persistent marriage proposals, Dr. Hewmann. Really, I do. Each one is like a precious jewel to me. But I believe celebratory anniversaries needn't be limited to weddings. How 'bout we commemorate other milestones? Anniversary of the first time you asked me to marry you, for example. The second and third times you asked me to marry you. The first time we boinked on a speeding train. First time a woman stopped us on a Manhattan street, rolling her window down to comment on the pooch love.
Again, I must say no to marriage. But yes to Paris. Extra cream, por favor.
Sad to say, I was surprised, Bill. When did Dick Cavett essays become the literary equivalent of watching Andy Rooney clean out his desk drawers every Sunday evening?
They say that one should never trust a skinny chef.
However, I don't trust them.
"If Orson Welles was alive, he'd kick your quivering white ass. Buddy Hackett, Beverly Sills, and Jackie Gleason would patiently wait their turn."
I have no doubt that this is true.
I also strongly suspect that, given that still-alive hypothesis, those people would be wondering wtf ever happened to Ms. P, anyway.
In fact, in all modesty and with reluctance to place myself in such sophisticated company, after *i'm* dead i suspect that, were i alive, i'd also not only want to kick Dick Cavett's ass, but would be wondering wtf ever happened to Ms. P.
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