A newspaper in Minnesota decided to cut ties with a longtime columnist after he used his column to fat shame man he sat next to while on a flight.
Alan Linda spent 30 years as an unpaid columnist for the Fargus Falls Daily Journal who had a Friday piece to talk about whatever run through his mind.
During his last column, Alan decided to share his personal and disgusting opinions on overweight people by body-shamming and making fun of on specific man. During his bullying Alan poked fun about the man’s weight, his Georgia accent and later talked about overweight people who eat popcorn at the movies.
He starts out saying, “Have you noticed the size of people lately?” and continuing with, “But people in general are bigger. Wider. Thicker. Got huge belts. No holes left in them.”
The newspaper announced that they were cutting ties with him saying, “Not only did this offend many of our reads, it offended us. Bully others is no OK. Body shamming is not OK. Racist views are not OK. Homophobia is not OK. The list goes on, but you get the picture. Let’s debate the issues, not make personal attacks on people.”
The paper’s editor and publisher Tim Engstrom also spoke with the Minneapolis Star Tribune saying that body-shaming is no longer acceptable like before.
“It all goes into the category of what’s acceptable these days along with racism and homophobia. They’re kind of asking adults not to act like children,” said Tim Engstrom.
When contacted by e-mail, Alen told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
And the reasoning why The Fargo Falls Daily Journal published Alan’s body-shaming piece was Tim Engstrom was out sick with pneumonia and that they had another issue to deal with instead of babysitting Alan.
“The staff ran the column because it was routine- Alan Linda was in the spot every Friday,” said the Daily Journal editorial. “His column, ‘The Prairie Spy,’ has been there for years. And meanwhile, the staff was busy withholding the publication off a letter to the editor with a fake name they had discovered.
In other words, they had two pucks coming at the goalie that day, and they stopped only one.”
Here’s a small part of Alan’s column:
I was on an airplane not too long ago, seated on one of three seats. Guess who my seat partners were? The one on my left was so big, I couldn’t get the arm rest down. If he didn’t weigh 300-plus pounds, then I don’t weigh 165 pounds.
I tried. The arm rest. Tried to get it down. He looked at me, kind of grimaced. And when a 300-plus guy has you effectively pinned in and you can’t even run for it, when they grimace at you, your first thought is: “Oh, man. He looks hungry.”
Hard to sell popcorn dripping with butter to people who already can’t squeeze their big, fat — ummmmm — self into the seat.
Via:nypost
