Woe Is Me!

From the 28 November 2000 edition of the Seattle Times:

John Leo

Once again, the United States is the undisputed world champion in the creation of social victims. Here are the winners of this column’s Victims of the Year competition;

 NON-HUGGERS VICTIMIZED BY HUGGERS.

Two eighth-grade girls were punished at a Dallas junior high school after engaging in a hallway hug. They said the hug was friendly not sexual, but the school’s principal said hugging could lead to other things and create peer pressure for students who may not want that type of contact.

FOOTBALL PLAYERS VICTIMIZED BY BOOING.

After Penn State’s usually powerful football team lost five of its first eight games, the university faculty senate knew exactly how to cope. It passed a resolution denouncing “negative cheering,” to be read to crowds at all Penn State home games. Possible future resolution: mandatory cheering after bad plays.

CHILDREN VICTIMIZED BY READING.

A feminist professor says reading aloud to one’s children is an act of violence that represses the young, forcing them into the jail of patriarchy and cultural structure. Children are unaware of this, said Peggy Kamuf of the University of Southern California, because the psychic pain causes repression of the memory

CANADIAN PSYCHES DAMAGED BY ‘SOUTH PARK’.

A Canadian woman says her son Kenny is victimized by the TV cartoon show “South Park,” in which the Kenny character is killed each week. She said the show should be banned, or that the Kenny character should be named Dweebie or Doofus or any name that has no potential of deeply hurting the psyche of any Canadian.

CLINTON: “I’M OPPRESSED, JUST LIKE YOU.”

In an interview with the Advocate, a gay magazine, Bill Clinton depicted himself as oppressed, just like gays and blacks. During the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment, gays and blacks stuck with him because “people who have been targeted, who’ve been publicly humiliated and abused, I think identified with what was going on. . . . The whole thing was just a vehicle to try to find some last, desperate way to undermine the results of two elections . . . and the fact that I tried to be a president for people who had been left out.” The Washington Post commented dryly: “That’s not the way we recall it.”

SINGLE PEOPLE VICTIMIZED BY HEARTLESS SOCIETY.

A new victim group, the American Association for Single People, argued in a series of ads that “single people have been suffering in silence” and were “virtually ignored” during the presidential campaign. The group was especially irked by Ralph Nader “who has never been married” and who “could easily tell unmarried voters that he sympathizes.” The group recommends esteem-building books such as “It’s OK to Be Single” and a book pointing out that Jesus was single.