DATE: Saturday, April 12, 1997              TAG: 9704120001

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY

                                            LENGTH:   85 lines

JOKE HITS HOME WHEN SADISM MASQUERADES AS MIRTH, IT'S NOT FUNNY

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade - Doo Dah or otherwise - but a caller to the newspaper this week reminds us that hilarity resulting from the physical appearance of others isn't funny. It's cruelty masquerading as comedy.

Sharynli Kantor, a Norfolk women, was offended by a float in last Friday's no-holds-barred parade. It was a gigantic papier-mache woman wearing a sash declaring her ``Miss Fat City.'' In her hand she held a donut. Adding insult to injury, from Ms. Kantor's point of view, the rear of the float sported a ``Wide Load'' sign.

The float was the first-place winner in the parade's commercial division and was intended to provoke a laugh based on recent news reports that Norfolk has more overweight people than almost anywhere else in America.

Ms. Kantor wasn't laughing, and she doubts other overweight people who lined the parade route were either.

``Parades should just be fun,'' she said. ``They shouldn't be an opportunity to make fun of fat people.''

I confess I didn't go to this year's Doo Dah parade, but at least one other person I spoke with who was there found the Miss Fat City float tasteless. Of course, since the point of the Doo Dah Parade is tastelessness, this obviously was a minority opinion.

Ms. Kantor argues that the obese are the last segment of society open to ridicule and prejudice without consequence. She says if the rest of us at more or less normal weight had to spend a day inside an obese body, we might understand.

This hits painfully close to home because my brother - a great guy and one of my best friends - has spent much of his life battling a weight problem.

In fact, a few years back when he was at his heaviest, my brother declared himself no longer fat but ``magnificent.'' I believe my brother is the unusual overweight. He has not allowed his lifelong weight problem to ruin his life or job prospects. He's a successful advertising executive, happily married and the father of four - soon to be five - children. When he was in sales my brother declared his weight an asset: ``People never forget me when I make a sales call, like they would some skinny guy,'' he used to say.

My brother has always had a wide circle of friends and no shortage of girlfriends when he was single.

So I was floored a few years ago when he and I dined at one of those all-you-can-eat seafood places and I watched a complete stranger stalk up to my brother in the buffet line and say something to the effect of ``Hey, Fatso, don't you think you've had enough?``

I was horrified and wanted to kill him, but my brother's calmer nature prevailed. Embarrassed and red-faced by the outburst, my brother just wanted to retreat to our table.

``Stuff like that happens all the time,'' he said, shrugging.

As he related a torrent of cruel encounters he'd endured over the years with complete strangers who had freely insulted his appearance and made all manner of brutal observations about his weight, I was stunned.

There was the time a passenger on an airplane loudly complained that the ``fat guy'' next to her was taking up too much room. And the flight attendant on another flight who wondered out loud if the seat belt would be big enough for him.

Ms. Kantor this week said her experiences mirror his. There's a group of teen-agers on her street, for instance, who oink loudly and make awful remarks when she walks down the street. She says she once lost a job because her supervisor thought she was too fat.

Maybe it's time for fat jokes to go the way of Polish and black jokes. Maybe it's time we realized that overweight people are just people. It most certainly is time for society to lose its obsession with thin.

On last Saturday night's ``Prairie Home Companion'' radio show, raconteur Garrison Keillor proved that a good joke need not make fun of any ethnic group. He chose to focus good-naturedly on North Dakotans, much as he often does on mythical Norwegian bachelor farmers.

It went something like this: Three North Dakotans walked into a bar in a jubilant mood. They offered to buy drinks for the house, and after awhile the curious bartender asked the trio what they were celebrating.

``Why we just finished the jigsaw puzzle,'' one replied.

The bartender asked: ``How long did it take you?''

``Three months,'' replied a second Dakotan.

``Three months, that's a really long time for a jigsaw puzzle.''

``Not really,'' said the third Dakotan. ``On the box it said 2 to 4 years.''

Garrison Keillor has the right idea. Mirth that relies on ridiculing people because of their appearance, sex or race isn't funny. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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