5 Feet of Fury

Jim Goad: The Human Impulse to Dehumanize

Jim Goad writes:

During a televised panel discussion with a group of outraged female ham-planets, an extremely obese, severely balding, and horrifyingly unattractive “size acceptance campaigner” named Kathryn Szrodecki told Hopkins that her comments constituted a “hate crime,” at which point Hopkins urged her to call the police. “There’s a telephone right there—feel free,” Hopkins told her, mordantly adding, “Would you like it to be brought to you? Because you’re probably going to find it hard to walk there.”

Szrodecki waddled over to a telephone and indeed dropped a dime on Hopkins, although as of this writing police have yet to arrest Hopkins for the sinful crime of fat-shaming.

This new generation of insta-snitches—and there are endlessly dreary armies of them—who appear to feel justified in having human beings caged merely for hurting their feelings all seem afflicted with a self-absorbed notion that the only possible reason someone could have said something they found offensive was for the singular purpose of offending them…rather than, say, because it’s what they really believe.