By Jill Dellamalva
Arizona Daily Wildcat
May 1, 1998

Stupid stories about stupid people

Howard Stern once said, "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public." There was a time when I thought, "Hey, what's he talking about?" Now I wonder.

In Houston last week, Mayor Lee Brown's director of affirmative action, Lenoria Walker, was suspended from her job for three days without pay for confusing the terms "dwarf" and "midget." Walker used the term "midget" in a panel discussion in New Orleans at the National Conference of Black Mayors.

The front page of the Apr. 26 New York Times reported, "In discussing Houston's affirmative-action program at the conference, Ms. Walker said at one point, according to a tape recording of the proceeding: 'We have a Republican council member saying that we should have something with people with disabilities, a midget - ' Then Ms. Walker broke into laughter and said, 'I didn't say that!' "

First of all, when I looked up the word midget in Webster's Thesaurus, I saw the word dwarf right next to it. I admit that before reading the article, I didn't know that midgets had different body proportions than dwarfs, and that they develop at a younger age than dwarfs. But is this reason enough to suspend a woman from her job? Granted, she did make a foolish mistake, especially since her job was affirmative-action-related, but it was a mistake.

"My comments were uttered out of naiveté, not out of any ill intentions at all," Ms. Walker wrote to Councilman Joe Roach. "I cannot emphasize enough that in no way did I mean to be disparaging or demeaning to you or the community of persons of short stature. Again, my deepest apology," Walker wrote.

Roach wasn't very forgiving, however, commenting that if she said that in public, he wondered what she said in private. Isn't that nice? That's for you to decide. I think the whole thing is stupid. Can't both parties involved just focus on their jobs?

Here's another story for you, one that happened right here on campus. About a week ago, an article appeared in the Arizona Daily Wildcat about six female UA students filing complaints that the experimental face cream they were using was tainted with semen. Apparently, after receiving an e-mail message asking them to come to the man's house and do the experiment for $30, the girls alleged that the cream tasted like semen.

Where do I begin?

First of all, didn't any of these people take their lives into consideration before entering a strange man's house where "he has [them] lie down on his couch while the substance is applied to their faces"? That is concerning. Even more concerning is the fact that he allegedly asked some of them to bring their friends, and when the friends showed up, he only let one person at a time in the room with him.

"Hey Amy, do you want to go to this stranger's house with me, where he'll spread semen moisturizer all over your face? We can go after class." Hello??

And here's the one question I'd really like to ask: What were they doing eating the stuff? I don't usually eat my Lubriderm lotion.

Finally, there's one story in the news that irks me the most: the Linda McCartney story. In a statement to the press, Paul McCartney asked that the location of his family's secret desert home not to be revealed. It was the home, 15 miles outside of Tucson, where his wife had died of breast cancer. Paul McCartney's publicist, in an attempt to keep the press away, told them that Linda had died in Santa Barbara, California. But when no death certificate showed up, it was revealed that she did, in fact, die in Tucson, where she had once attended the UA.

In my opinion, any attempt to find the home that the family purchased in 1979, and was the only hidden place they could go to, would be disgusting. Why is there a need to take pictures of it? I don't want to see it. What does it matter what the place looked like? The only thing pictures of it are going to end up being is entertainment in the supermarket checkout line. Isn't that nice? I think it's stupid.

"Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public." I believe it now.

Jill Dellamalva is a junior majoring in creative writing and journalism. Her column, "Some might say" runs every other Friday.