OT - victims

[Guest guest]

Shouldn’t the poor,

powerless, “victim” AA steppers be added to this list?  

Victims of the year (US News & World

Report, Dec. 4, 2000)

The annual awards for

America's most unfairly treated

Once again, the United States is the undisputed world

champion in the creation of social victims. Here are the winners of this

column's Victims of the Year competition:

Nonhuggers victimized by

huggers. Two eighth-grade girls

were punished at a Euless, Texas, junior high school after engaging in a

hallway hug. They said the hug was friendly, not sexual, but the school's

principal said hugging could lead to other things and create peer pressure for

students who may not want that type of contact. " They just don't need to

put their hands on each other, because they could get in trouble, " he

said.

Football players victimized

by booing. After Penn State's

usually powerful football team lost five of its first eight games, the

university faculty senate knew exactly how to cope with fans who act up and

boo: It passed a resolution denouncing " negative cheering, " to be

read to crowds at all Penn State home games. Possible future resolution:

mandatory cheering after bad plays.

Children victimized by

reading. A feminist professor

says reading aloud to one's children is an act of violence that represses the

young, forcing them into the jail of patriarchy and cultural structure.

Children are unaware of this abuse, says Peggy Kamuf of the University of

Southern California, because the psychic pain involved is so great that their

memory is repressed.

Sadistic cop a victim in

Abner Louima case. New York policeman

Volpe, pleading for leniency after his conviction in the horrific

brutalizing of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, told a defense psychologist,

" I was the victim. " The psychologist said that when Volpe was punched

during the brawl that preceded Louima's arrest, he was overcome by " fear,

anxiety, physical pain, and momentary disorientation, " leading to a sense

of powerlessness that caused his torture of Louima.

Canadian psyches damaged by

" South Park. " A

Canadian woman says her son Kenny is victimized by the TV cartoon show South Park, in which the Kenny character

is killed each week. She said the show should be banned or that the Kenny

character should be named Dweebie or Doofus " or any name that has no

potential of deeply hurting the psyche of any Canadian. "

Women victimized by urinals. A women's anti-urinal movement in Sweden, Germany, and

Australia is partly based on the idea that males who stand up to urinate are

committing " a nasty, macho gesture " suggestive of violence toward

women. The U.S. Navy stumbled into this argument by announcing that it is

thinking of replacing urinals on its ships with stainless-steel toilets.

Feeling victimized by criticism that the Navy might be caving in to radical

feminists, Rear Adm. S. R. Pietropaoli wrote a testy letter to the Washington Times stating that Navy plans

to remove " trouble-plagued urinals " have " nothing to do with

gender. "

Pickle victimizes

burger-eater. A Tennessee woman is

suing Mc's, claiming she was badly burned on the chin by a hot pickle

after biting into a dangerous and defective Mc's hamburger.

of Knoxville says the offending pickle left her with mental injuries and

a permanent chin scar.

Clinton: " I'm oppressed,

just like you. " In an interview with

the Advocate, a gay magazine,

Bill Clinton described himself as oppressed, just like gays and blacks. During

the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment, gays and blacks stuck with him because

" people who've been targeted, who've been publicly humiliated and abused,

I think identified with what was going on . . . the whole thing was just a

vehicle to try to find some last, desperate way to undermine the result of two

elections . . . and the fact that I tried to be a president for people who had

been left out. " The Washington Post

commented dryly: " That's not the way we recall it. "

God made me do it. When Pope II said that an assassin's attempt to

kill him in 1981 was one of the prophecies made to three Portuguese children at

Fatima in 1917, the assassin said he should be set free because he wasn't

responsible for shooting the pope: It was all preordained, presumably making

him an instrument and victim of God's will. The clemency request was granted for

other reasons.

Calista and : victims

of sizeism, sexism. Calista Flockhart, TV

star of Ally McBeal, said that

she is criticized as too thin and Lewinsky is criticized as too fat

because a sexist public resents successful women. " I think it's a way to

punish us for our advance, " she said.

Single people victimized by

heartless society. A new victims' group,

the American Association for Single People, argued in a series of ads that

" single people have been suffering in silence " and were " virtually

ignored " during the presidential campaign. The group was especially irked

by Ralph Nader, " who has never been married " and who " could

easily tell unmarried voters that he sympathizes. " The group recommends

esteem-building books such as It's OK to Be

Single and Positively Single,

and a book pointing out that Jesus was single.