Did you hear the one about the fat guy who got pissed at Viacom and the New York Times?

Why is it that liberals believe it's discriminatory to joke about homosexuals, harassment to joke about women and sex, and racist/discriminatory to joke about minorities or someone's cultural heritage, but if you're religious, old or overweight, it's open season for public ridicule?

I was browsing around today on the New York Times and found an advertisement ridiculing overweight men on one of its web pages:

(Please note this is a 133kb file and will take a moment to download.) The advertisement, located on the righthand column of the NYT's web page, is apparently some liberal's attempt at "fat boy" humor. It features an overweight man taking up space on two stools at a lunch counter. The caption reads: "Buy 'Adults' without Spike and you're missing tons of men."

It's an advertisement for SpikeTV, a unit of Viacom International, which also owns broadcast outlet CBS News, home of Dan Rather and forged documents. (Need I say more?) The advertisement is targeted at advertisers who want to get their advertising message to men and SpikeTV is trying to tell them that a majority of its audience demographic is male and those advertisers should buy commercial time on its cable shows.

Let's just hope that none of the advertisers they are targeting is overweight because that ad just managed to piss off at least one overweight male.

To add insult to injury, some website layout artist at the NYT placed this ad over a NYT in-house ad promoting its story on how fast food giant McDonald's is franchising in Russia. The headline for the in-house ad? "Want fries with that?"

It's real fucking hilarious Pinch and Sumner. I'm laughing both of my ass cheeks off.

[Update 5/5/2005: New York Times to large people: Tough! It's policy. Nearly six weeks after complaining about this advertisment to the Public Editor of the New York Times, I finally received a reply from the customer service representative for the digital version of the New York Times. Their response to me and my letter back to them follow:

Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 16:04:32 -0400
To: NEWSXXX@6thXXXXte.com
From: "NYTimes.com CS"
Subject: Spike TV ad on NYTimes.com

Dear Mr. McBride:

Thank you for contacting the New York Times.

We are sorry if you did not receive our previous e-mail in response to your original message about the Spike tv ad on our site.

All of the ads we take conform to the advertising acceptability guidelines of The New York Times newspaper.

However, we did pass along your comments to our colleagues in the Advertising Department and they have shared them with the Advertiser.

Thanks for writing. Again, we are sorry that you never heard from us.

Regards,

Gillian Burns
NYTimes.com
Customer Service
www.nytimes.com/help

To: "NYTimes.com CS"
Subject: Re: Spike TV ad on NYTimes.com
Cc: Public

Dear Ms. Burns,

Thank you for your reply.

If I'm reading your reply correctly, you say that you accept acceptable ads and don't accept unacceptable ads. That's enlightening. Not.

I understand this ad was deemed acceptable by the New York Times; that's why the newspaper ran the advertisement. What I am trying to determine is why such a degrading advertisement is acceptable to the New York Times. This is an advertisement that is obviously degrading to large people. It is more than degrading, it is discriminatory and the fact the advertisement was allowed signals that this type of discrimination against a person's size is common and acceptable at the New York Times and at SpikeTV/Viacom.

So I am trying to determine why filters weren't already in place at the prestigious New York Times to prevent the acceptance by the newspaper of such a degrading advertisement. That is the question I asked, and that is the question I would like answered and answered officially and fully -- if not by you Ms. Burns, then by the display advertising manager or the publisher of the New York Times. SpikeTV may have created this ad, and shame on them for presenting their customers in this degrading manner to advertisers; but that ad may never have seen the light of day had not the New York Times published it. SpikeTV manufactured the bullet, but the New York Times made the gun and pulled the trigger and is equally culpable in this.

I await a reply.

Sincerely,

Mark McBride
Editor/Publisher
The 6th Estate]

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Tangled Web at Viacom: I was searching for a contact address at the Viacom website to give corporate chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone a little insight into how SpikeTV views its viewers. There is none that I could find, but while searching, I stumbled across this nice explanation on its employment page:

"Viacom is an equal opportunity employer. We recruit, employ, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or veteran status and we comply with all federal and state laws."

As a Vietnam-era veteran, I am just tickled camo that Viacom doesn't discriminate against persons just because they may have served their country -- and protected Viacom's assets -- with time spent in the military. Sumner, you might have a law degree from Harvard, but you don't know the law. I wonder just how much money Viacom properties receive in federal contracts?

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Blog of the Day:

Yonkers Tribune

Ever see that liberal bumper sticker, "Think globally. Act locally?" This is the template to follow and is what they meant in the '60s by power to the people. This website is operated by a 55-year-old immigrant the New York Times calls a "gadfly" who doesn't appreciate the political shenanigans going on in the hometown of his adopted country. So he started a blog and has taken an active role in not only tilting at the establishment windmills but actually connecting with his bitstream lance. Kind of like SmadaNek, yesterday's Blog of the Day. The power of the pen is mightier than the sword? Not always. But in this case, it is. As I have written previously, the 6th estate is the information battleground for the citizen who cares more about truth and the future than advertising dollars and is willing to take a few risks for the truth and freedom. Not everyone can have Sean Hannity's audience. Not everyone can be the offspring of Katherine Graham or "Punch" Sulzberg and have a media empire tossed into their lap. But everyone can have a blog and their say however which way they want to say it. As most veterans know, the best soldier in any war is a patriotic volunteer, not a mercenary or conscript. And that's why the liberals will fail -- they don't hire veterans who would know that. Keep on thinking the 6th estate is filled with gadflys. We want you to believe that.

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I have updated my post "A Rare Case of Balance" with a description of exactly how Terri Schindler Schiavo will die following her starvation and dehydration. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the process that will lead to her death is cruel and torturous, a method we as a society wouldn't accept to terminate the life of an animal, much less a human. She may be in a "permanent vegetative state" but she is not a plant.