One Journalist Just Learned the Hard Way That Fat Shaming Can Get You Fired
A local Minnesota newspaper recently got national attention for publishing an article by journalist Alan Linda in which he fat-shamed a stranger.
The longtime columnist began the piece — which has since been removed from the Fergus Falls Daily Journal‘s website — by lamenting the growing waistlines of people in society.
“Have you noticed the size of people lately? Of course, none of us from the post World War II era can help but notice that kids are a lot taller these days,” he wrote. “But people in general are bigger. Wider. Thicker. Got huge belts. No holes left in them. Okay, I give up. I’m trying real hard here not to use the F word. Fat! Not that other F word. Although this one’s bad enough.”
Linda then used particularly insensitive language to describe his seatmate on a flight he recently was on.
“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,” he wrote. “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.’”
Not only was his size a topic discussed, but also the journalist made fun of the passenger for his dialect and described how he feigned interest in the man’s background.
“I decided I’d better talk to this guy. (Find out if he’s hungry, at least),” he wrote. “It turns out he was from Georgia, and couldn’t wait to get back home to find out if the tornado that tore up that part of Georgia got his home. He did seem mostly upset about the local Walmart store getting destroyed.”
He apparently struggled to understand the man’s accent, and took to the column to deride the passenger for it. “’Thet torndo rapped the saling raght offen the play-us.’ Huh? I’m getting deaf in my old age — or as the old folks in Iowa used to say it — ‘deef,’ — so it was impossible with the din of the airplane in the background to know for sure what it was he just said,” he wrote. “So I smiled and nodded. Then I shook my head side to side, just to make sure I had the proper reaction included. He seemed to think I was sympathetic, and I seemed to think maybe he wouldn’t steal my airline peanuts if and when they ever brought any.”
When the passenger had to use the restroom, Linda wondered if he would fit and once again mocked the man’s speech. “He had to get up once to go to the bathroom. You know the size of the bathroom at the back of the plane? And the door into it ain’t hardly a foot wide. I kind of wanted to foller him back air, watch if that worked, him getting hisself in there. (You gotta love that language.)”
So how did a piece that’s so blatantly hateful and disrespectful make it to print? The paper tried to make amends after its mistake by parting ways with Linda shortly after the column was published and issuing an apology.
“Bullying others is not OK. Body shaming 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 editorial board wrote.
The publication chalked the publishing of the article up to miscommunication issues between the staff and the editor.
“The editor had pneumonia and wasn’t present. The staff ran the column because it was routine — Alan Linda was in that spot every Friday. His column, ‘The Prairie Spy,’ has been there for years. And meanwhile, the staff was busy withholding the publication of 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.”
The Journal finished the note with a message to the readers about its commitment to universal acceptance. “The Daily Journal is more than a newspaper. We are people — people who care about this community and we come in all shapes and sizes. Not one person here at the Daily Journal likes or agrees with body shaming. Ever.”
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