No, Meghan McCain, This Is What Socially-Accepted Prejudice Looks Like

I recently read Meghan McCain’s idiotic blog responding to Laura Ingraham and her attack on overweight women. No, I don’t think it’s idiotic because it’s saying the attack was unwarranted and juvenile, since that’s obviously true. And, no, I don’t think it’s idiotic because it, like all her other posts, reads as though a 9-year-old wrote it. Mostly, it was this line that I objected to: Today, taking shots at a woman’s weight has become one of the last frontiers in socially accepted prejudice.

Inferring that you’re chunky is not a socially-accepted prejudice. Don’t believe me? Try reading the numerous responses written and spoken (including here) about Ingraham’s remark, all of which deem it out of line (even Bill O’Reilly admitted that). That’s not social acceptance of said prejudice; that’s a rightful repudiation.

What is socially-accepted prejudice, then? How about the kind of prejudice that rescinds 10% of the American population’s basic civil rights to live and love as they please? How about a new and growing trend in South Africa to “cure” some of these people by engaging in “corrective rape”? How about it seeming like a slur to imply our President was possibly once maybe connected to someone who might be a Muslim?

That, my poor dear, is what hate look like. And it’s nothing whatsoever like implying that Jessica Simpson was wearing something mind-bogglingly unflattering that undercut her image as a sex symbol (one, by the by, that she and her father hand-crafted and topped off with a video of her washing a car in a string bikini).

This is not to say that, seeing as weight is still a social and not a health concern in American culture, it’s not difficult for you to hear someone lambaste yours. Especially when your social circle is largely, I’m supposing, composed of wealthy women who love nothing more than to snark at anyone approaching a double-digit dress size whenever possible (my high school memories are all coming back to me now). All I’m saying is it would behoove you to show some perspective, and some respect, for people who have to somehow survive and cope with the real deal.