THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408060066
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
I HEAR America whining.
From sea to shining sea, the land that was once the home of the brave has become the refuge of the whimpering, the simpering, the tearful.
Flip through any newspaper, tune in any TV station, listen to any talk show, and you will hear idiots blaming their own problems on others. It's time for a lot of you out there to get a grip on your life.
The politically correct have raised whining to an art form. But right-wing conservatives are guilty, too. A great example is talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who preaches daily that there needs to be more discipline across the fruited plain. This from a man who is to weight control what the MacBeths were to hospitality.
Speaking of weight control, let us now look in on a Rush Limbaugh look-alike, Mitchell Rupe, 39, who is on death row in Washington State. Rupe was convicted of murdering two women during a bank robbery in 1981.
You'd think Rupe would have the decency to go to the gallows without a whimper. Not so.
He is now whining to the courts that he should not face the hangman's rope because at 409 pounds he is too heavy. His weight is so great that he may be decapitated,'' he claims. And that, he sniffles, would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
I swear.
Rupe's attorney concedes his client was offered his choice of either lethal injection or hanging, according to a Washington law, which mandates hanging when a capital defendant refuses to choose either, as Rupe did. Rupe has gained 80 pounds since his arrest - on a 4,700 calories-per-day diet. He stuffs his face with prison food. And porks out on potato chips and chocolates he purchases at the prison store.
``He could jog if he wanted to, but that's not what he chooses to do,'' his attorney explains. As Rupe's case works its way through the federal courts, the prisoner continues to whine and dine. It is surely ironic that a man who has already lost his head should make decapitation a principal concern.
Whining is now so persuasive that media news editors anticipate it and tailor their coverage of features and news accordingly.
Take dwarf-tossing, for instance. Newspaper editors have decided never, ever, to report upon or publish photographs of dwarf-tossing, a popular form of amusement at many taverns across the country. Never mind that the customers like it. Or that the plucky dwarfs hired to serve as helmeted and elbow-padded projectiles say they welcome the money they earn, get a rush from flying through the air and enjoy the attention they get from being center-stage in a harmless recreational activity.
Yet, unless a dwarf - God forbid - is hurled out a window and falls 20 floors to the sidewalk, you are not going to see any dwarf-tossing stories or photos in your newspaper. Why? Because someone may whine that tossing dwarfs is demeaning - not only to dwarfs but possibly to a multitude of others who are ``vertically challenged.'' Besides, instead of having fun, the tossed dwarfs should forget about having a good time or earning a living and learn how to feel sorry for themselves like everybody else. Riiiggghht.
I think I'm going to throw up . . . but it won't be a dwarf.
The latest target of the overly concerned lynch mob, which, as always, has very little to do and finds time hanging on its hands like lead weights, is, of all things, the Disney movie ``The Lion King.''
Unless you have the exquisite sensitivity and hair-trigger tear ducts of the politically correct, you have probably seen the movie and believed it a charming depiction of a young lion cub named Simba as he struggles for maturity and his role as king of the jungle. Wrong . . . wrong . . . wrong.
Harvard psychologist Carolyn Newberger has attacked the film for glorifying a racist, unjust society in which a favored few prosper while the poor and powerless are subjected to unspeakable degradation. The lion that is the villain in the film is named Scar. Newberger claims that Scar speaks in gay cliches. Whatever those are. Ergo, Disney is engaging in gay bashing.
Sniffle . . . whine . . . honk!
Nothing is too trivial to escape the wrath and indignation of the peevish and petulant purveyors of political correctness. And I hope before another day passes that Newberger fixes her sights on Little Red Riding Hood.
I'm sure you're familiar with that children's story. You know, the one about a wolf in drag that - in its stereotypical treatment of the wolf as villain - demeans and insults transvestites and cross-dressers. by CNB