Along with my morning coffee I enjoy a double pleasure. Viewing the prior night roundup of political satirists. A double wake up shot to start the day.
All is fair in politics and satire? Like all social things there are boundaries of societal norms. The F word was one of them. Now it is not. Its common vernacular use offends me. It is just a word but words matter. It divorces a physical act within a frame of an associated conceptual meaning that I hold dear and wish to believe created me. Maybe I have not changed with the times. If someone offends the meaning of something I firmly believe is either right or wrong then.....that's life? Theirs not mine. Get over it.
What I find hard to get over is the use by the satirists that call attention to social problems by ridiculing personal appearance as a tool to introduce the serious presentation of a reason that person deserves public social ridicule. In another context it would be called bullying. Appearance or body shaming that draws laughter and ridicule that has little or nothing to do with the reason that a person's actions or statements are the object of ridicule. On the other hand when actions and statements fit the shoe then the target deserves to wear it in a conceptual "Laughing Stock". A term literally derived from times when people were put into a stock for sanctioned public ridicule as well as inescapable physical abuse like actual rotten egg on the face of a person held in the stock or on stage.
It is unfortunate that a social norm of well deserved scorn has gone into the media domain of associating a valid social judicious reason for public scorn with direct association to personal appearance of the person scorned while presenting a picture of the person shamed.
The phrase "looking like" used by political satirists makes the direct relational connection to things like, for example, a turtle. If a key word phrase search was done on all the times that popular political satirists have used "looks like" or "looking like" while displaying an picture of the person appearance shamed it would probably be amusing for the few pictures. Then what? It would be an interesting analysis test.
The result? I expect that initial laughter would quickly die as the audience becomes self aware. Aware that the initial reason for laughing based solely at a person's appearance while presenting valid reasons for ridiculing was not fair. That they had been manipulated by a bully's trick outside the boundary of a social norm.
Bullying derision based on person's appearance is body shaming.
Bullying is wrong and should not be tolerated. It is not tolerated on school grounds because it fosters an unacceptable social behavior. It must not be tolerated in our social media.
Bullying is off limits.
Our political satirists deliver the truth of our social institutions in a way that news does not. Someday a political satirist is going to stand up and deliver the truth that their use of ridicule of personal appearance to make a relating connect to what they deserve to be ridiculed for is wrong and that they personally publicly apologize for having done it and will stop doing it.
I will have immense respect for the decency of the political satirists that does that. That person will lead the parade of all other apologizing satirists to the extent that any one of them that ever uses that trick of association to get a laugh will be in the "Laughing Stock" to receive righteous public scorn.
It is bullying. It is wrong. Those that deserved to be publicly shamed should be. Media is the court of public opinion but also shapes that opinion. There are boundaries to the how that is done objectively and subjectively.
Associating ridicule of appearance with ridicule of actions or words of the object of ridicule where there is not association and no intent beyond appearance shaming is pure bullying.
Bullying is wrong and as socially unacceptable as unwanted sexual advances.
It takes courage to stand up to Bullying.
Who among you political satirists that I so admire will be the first among your peers to Stand UP?
Appearance Bullying by political satirists is a cheap laugh. I admire them but they can do better than Bullying from the gutter of Appearance Shaming.
“As an American, I have the constitutional right to say that Donald Trump looks like a rotting haystack made of meat,” Colbertadded, “but you cannot!”.
Yes, Steven you can say it but.......should you?
Comment on appearance was a bully insult. An insult to your own gifted talent to do better than that.
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