Anyone may comment. No login or account necessary. As the Oscars are awarded tonight, Hollywood has reached the last frontier of apologies.

One of the few groups entertainers can still insult freely is "midgets."
I am a person with dwarfism and I get offended every time I hear someone in Hollywood use that word. After Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and Isaiah Washington, calling a person a "midget" is about the last thing anyone in Hollywood has left to apologize for saying.

Midget is a word that is misunderstood by most people. I hear it yelled at me out of car windows, both as an insult to my being short and sometimes as a threat to my safety. It is also frequently heard on television.

I'd like to help set the record straight about this annoying, biting word that has followed me around my entire life.
The outcry over bigotry, homophobia and racism during the past six months in Hollywood has been admirable. But why should someone apologize for using the word midget?

We must first look at where the word comes from. Midget was created from the combination of the word midge, meaning "small fly" and the suffix -et, so that etymologically the word midget means a "very small small fly."
DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against little people.

I do, however, have a big problem with tall people. Them and their long shadows and their pointy elbows, lumbering all over the place, making ME step out of their way because they're too "important" to step aside.

02/21
Category:

.. but this is not a joke.

It's real. It's from a San Francisco Chronicle story.

Quote:
The half-inch-long crustaceans are in the path of the campus' long-range development plans and, according to the U.

S. Army Corps of Engineers, their environmental standing might force the university to expand elsewhere -- possibly 15 miles away.
The campus, which opened in 2005 and is 6 miles from downtown Merced, wants to grow directly to the north and east with new dorms, lecture halls, classroom buildings and other facilities needed to accommodate a projected enrollment of 25,000 students by 2030.

The expansion would involve 910 adjacent acres, including 86 acres of seasonal wetlands over which the Corps of Engineers holds authority to regulate development or reject it outright.
Even more wetlands would be affected by a new residential university community of about 31,000 people planned for next to the campus. UC Merced and private developers want to jointly build the new city on 2,100 acres -- including 40 acres of wetlands -- directly south of the campus.

It would include 11,600 homes, with some of the homes sold on the open market and others built as subsidized housing for faculty and staff. Also planned are stores, restaurants and entertainment facilities.

.. very disturbing.

I love Disney, but I can't say I loved watching this.
True story. I remember when I drew Donald Duck for the first time.

I was working for Walt Disney. It was a Tuesday in May, 1934. I'd just gotten back to my desk from a bathroom break, when this guy I used to hate, Donald Peterman, sneaks up behind me, which he did all the time, and barks, "Whatdja doin'?

" right into my ear. He had a mouthful of something that smelled like fart, and because his mouth is so full what I hear instead sounds more like the noise an angry mallard makes.
So, I tell Donald to take a hike and then pick up my pencil, and a couple minutes later the first sketch of Donald Duck is done.

Well, at first his name was Donald Peterman, but that's where Walt Disney was such a genius. He changed the name to Donald Duck and the rest is cartoon history.
And if you believe that story I've got a war to sell you.