Barry Clifford: The Little People

In almost every major tabloid medium across the United States and which since has gone global is a story about a person that sought to have sex with a 14 year old girl that he met online while not knowing that he was being ensnared in a sting operation. The term disgusting and perverted is appropriate to describe his actions but that was not the case alone, and the word prejudiced perhaps is better used to describe the media’s actions in reporting the story of those that are different in physical ways too. In this case we are talking about the pervert.

The main thrust of the media reporting was to concentrate on the fact that he was a dwarf, a derogatory term that people who have this condition reject, to describe his physical condition, and not what he was been accused of, and in case there was confusion they also published his height, that varied from time to time depending on the glee being enjoyed by that particular media outlet. The age of the girl that he was supposed to meet shifted a few years here and there too just to add to the fire of revulsion that the audience was intended to feel, a revulsion that was fueled only by physical prejudice.

And so it was that the good people were reporting on the bad person when it really was the big people reporting about the little people literally. The smell inside the car when this ‘little’ man was arrested also ‘shocked’ the attending police officers, which is surprising considering the smell of urine in a car on a drunken wild Saturday night might not be all that surprising; again the intent here was to demean this little man even further.

And then the media circus focused on more of the man’s physical appearance replete with unkempt and unshaven appearance, and it took off into cyber space and not once did anyone question anymore what they were really reporting about.

By Barry Clifford