Heightism may be immoral but it isn't illegal...and that's what matters.

   Yesterday, I attended the movie "Young Adult"; a movie featuring the beautiful Charlize Theron and actor/stand up comedian Patton Oswalt.

   I guess you could say the theme of the movie was about letting go of the past so that you can move forward and achieve but both characters were having a tough time doing that. Mavis Gary(Theron)  was the former homecoming queen/popular girl in high school, who now is a writer of a series of books that is no longer selling and, after receiving an email from a former high school flame, returns  to a little town in Minnesota to win him back.  Upon arrival there, she encounters Matt Freehauf (Oswalt) whom she never noticed in high school despite the fact that his locker was next to hers all four years.(It was Patton Oswalt that drew me to this film because I wanted to see how his character was portrayed; Oswalt had played Spence on King of Queens and stands about 5'6")

  It came as no surprise that Oswalt's character was the typical geek/reject who was ignored by Theron's character.  She could only remember him when she saw that he was using a crutch as a result of a beating he took from a bunch of jocks in high school because they thought he was gay.  She then recalls him as Matt "the hate crime kid".   The incident received national attention but then went away when Matt had said that he wasn't gay and said "It turned out that it was just a bunch of jocks beating a fat kid's ass!"

   And...this is where I will again lodge a complaint.  The double standard!  It is perfectly acceptable to pulverize and bully the short or overweight kid; it is applauded! Though this story about Matt was fiction, incidents like his are altogether real.  The writer, Diablo Cody, had it correct, unfortunately.  When he was gay, it sparked outrage but when it turned out he was just an overweight kid, no one cared.   Why should it even make a difference?  Why all the hate and discord towards the short and overweight?  Why does no one care when it is such an epidemic and it ruins lives?

   Could it be that society isn't really as fair, accepting and tolerant as much as it says and pats itself on the back way too much about?   Maybe people shed their prejudices temporarily because they have to, because there are consequences if they exhibit them.  If  society was truly fair, moral and compassionate as it likes to portray itself as being, why are there still so many verbal assaults on short and overweight adults and physical assaults on short and overweight children in the schools?  

  Want an answer?  Because there are NO consequences!  It is seen as funny! Humorous!  We (the short) had better develop a sense of humor about being dehumanzied at work or coming home with fat lips and broken noses.   After all, what we experience is nothing compared to what other groups that have been disparaged have dealt with right?  That's what society will tell us anyway.  Nothing like trivializing an issue, so that they can keep on getting away with it.

   Morals don't matter; what is legal does.  Slavery, as immoral as it was, was legal before emancipation; people had to have a law to tell them to treat people as equals (though it wasn't until the Civil Rights movement that they finally were able to gain some semblance of equality).  Even genocide is legal in some countries, though killing people is highly immoral and evil.

  So, is it any surprise that we  are still discriminated against and disregarded?  It may be immoral and wrong but it isn't illegal and, nowadays, that's what still matters.  Society just needs to mature (as did the characters in "Young Adult") and not be told that they have to.    It shouldn't have to take legislation to get people to treat each other with respect and humanity

  I was just watching the movie  "The Reader" earlier today; this featured Kate Winslet as a former guard at Auschwitz who eventually was sent to prison for her participation in the execution of many.  However, there were so many guards at those camps that weren't held accountable for what they had done and why? As depraved and evil as it was, it wasn't illegal; they were doing what they were told.

   I will close with a quote from one of the characters (Professor Rohl) in "The Reader": "Societies think they operate by something called morality but they don't, they operate by something called law."