From: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Curse Of the Stuttering Pig
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Date: 16 Dec 1992 00:57:33 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Menlo park, Ca.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: purplehaze.corp.sun.com



Excerpted from yesterday's Chronicle:

"Burbank (AP)  The Walt Disney Co. has pulled an ad for a children's
bath soap that features Piglet, a stuttering character from "Winnie
the Pooh," after complaints from an advocacy group for stutterers.

"Part of the text for the print ad for Johnson and Johnson's Piglet's
Liquid Bath read: 'Squeaky Clean and Gentle Too, P-P-P-Piglet Makes
Bathtime Fun For You.'"


A militant advocacy group for *stutterers?!*  Give me a break!
Now I've seen everything.  No offense to stutterers is intended,
believe me (at least, not yet), but this is ridiculous.

I can't believe that anyone would be so incredibly small-minded
as to get up in arms about an ad for a children's bath soap named 
after a character from "Winnie the Pooh," and demand that it be taken 
off the air.  This must set a new record for sheer pettiness.  Even 
with the ad gone, the stories will still remain a treasured mainstay 
of children's literature.  Children will still be unshielded from 
the distressing, sordid knowledge that there are <gasp> *stutterers*
running around loose in the world!

What with all the hue and cry about minorities and handicapped people
not being adequately represented in TV commercials, you'd think that 
the membership of this group would be delighted that one of their kind
was the central character in an advertisement -- even if only in cartoon 
form, and hawking a children's bath product. 

And I'm also disappointed in the Walt Disney Company for spinelessly 
caving in to this lunatic-fringe group's demands.  Even if the group's 
members boycotted Disney, how great an effect could it possibly have?  
The group probably doesn't have much of a membership, and they'd probably 
have a pretty difficult time drumming up support for their cause among 
nonmembers.  It seems to me that even the hardcore, humorless PC weenies 
would only be willing to lower themselves so far; they take themselves
pretty seriously, after all.  

The trouble with humoring complaints like this is that it only encourages 
others with even sillier gripes.  It's the phenomenon I've mentioned 
before, in which little people who've never had a podium suddenly realize 
that they'll be listened to because others have become so gun-shy about 
possibly offending anyone.  This creates the widespread misconception that
anyone who complains about anything necessarily has a valid grievance,
and that anyone demanding an apology by definition deserves one.  Nobody 
has the backbone to tell anyone to sod off anymore, and that's a shame.
I take some small comfort, though, in the belief that it can't last
forever; eventually, stuff like this will reach such a ridiculous nadir
that even the more obtuse among us won't fail to grasp it.

Th-th-th-that's all, folks!


Geoff


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   used far too much, but that does not excuse dismissing someone's post
 because they use it, or telling them that using it means they're not worth
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Newsgroups: alt.peeves