They wonder where the kids learned it….

Kate Wingfield, an arts critic for the MetroWeekly, an online news magazine in Washington DC, had the following to say in her review of the opera “The Damed” at Kennedy Center.

In a recent metro-area school production of Don Quixote, parents were shocked and dismayed when teenage members of the audience greeted a fellow classmate’s performance with heckles and laughter. It wasn’t the boy’s singing or acting that drew the jeers (he was, in fact, very good), it was that he had been deemed ”too fat” by his peers. It was, to use the in-vogue phrase, a ”teachable moment.”

But who will be doing the teaching?

Flash forward to the Washington National Opera’s opening night of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, performed for an audience as urbane and sophisticated as one is likely to get in the nation’s capital. An audience that no doubt contained parents and grandparents who pride themselves on the mores and manners they no doubt assume they are passing to their privileged young.

Imagine then how disturbing it was to witness so many within this supposedly erudite cohort mocking a performer for the same ignorant and cruel reasons as that gaggle of unruly teens. True, they were not as loud, but in the context of a world-class operatic performance it was a disgrace. And the object of their derision? The magnificent soprano Jennifer Wilson in the role of Senta. It didn’t matter to them that Wilson had already demonstrated her sublime vocal skill and her subtle and intelligent acting — when Senta’s father sang of her female beauty they just couldn’t contain the quiet storm of sniggers and whispers.

How could such crass behavior occur in a crowd paying top-dollar to hear a Wagnerian soprano? Did these ladies and gentlemen forget they were at a live performance, so accustomed are they to gossiping about each other over lunch? Did they just not care? Could they be so saturated with Eddie Murphy’s Norbit fat-jokes and the over-plucked glistening flesh paraded before The Bachelor as to have become mere snuffling moles, utterly blind to true human beauty? Perhaps the requisite hush would have prevailed if it were Spitzer’s call-girl in the role. She claims to be a singer, after all.

No opera is appropriate for those unable to resist mocking others for ”failing” to meet this culture’s pathetically narrow and dumbed-down concept of beauty.
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It sickens me to see things like this. Have we become a nation of bigots. And before you go there—discrimination against anyone be it race, religion, sexual orientation, body size, education level, income level, disability, etc IS bigotry, plain and simple.

There would be outrage if someone went up to a person in a wheelchair and began calling them names, making fun of them. Yet in our society it is simply A-OK to turn on someone who is over weight.

WHY???

It is a simple case of violating a persons civil rights.

But societies views on the evil of being overweight is exactly why someone like Heidi was able to run her scam. She preyed on those who are overweight. Feeding them the same lines society does. Being fat is your own fault. Blaming them for being weak. All the things Heidi hated about herself she belittled other people for—and took their money to boot.

Learn to accept people as they are. Start with that person you see every morning in the mirror.

It sure would go a long way to making this world a better place to live……