After recording this a number of people noted that it actually looks like Trump has lost weight. That doesn’t necessarily make it less likely that the pouch is fat, though. Weight gained and lost can distribute oddly.
https://youtu.be/MZYpmAjn_qY
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Maybe we could set it up that you can only make fun of fat people *UP*.
But it’s wrong to make fun of fat people *DOWN*.Report
I would also agree with the take offered. Most of the comments I saw about the picture were laughing at him apparently having put his pants on backwards. To me, that feels like fair game as it would fall under the category of “stupid things he did.”
Even then though… who cares? To me, there is so much legitimate to criticize Trump for that wasting breath on his weight or hair or skin tone or pants choice is just dumb and dilutes the legitimate criticism.Report
Will, I am begging you to get a better background.Report
That ship set sail decades ago.Report
It’s not a background it’s my basement!
Wait, are you offering to buy me a green screen?Report
I would donate 7-8 bucks to the gofundme.Report
ItsOneBanana.gifReport
Are green screens needed now? With all the people I see using fake backgrounds in Zoom meetings, I figured modern software was smart enough to swap out natural backgrounds.
Edit: Looks like solid-color backgrounds are recommended but not required. I guess that explains the artifacting when people move. I’d think a video processor that didn’t have to run in real time could improve on that, though.Report
As someone who played Santa last Christmas in front of a picture of Santa’s workshop, lemme just say that there were obvious artifacts as I tilted my head while talking.
If a green screen can get someone from a C+ to a B when it comes to artifacts, I could see that being worth exploring.Report
From my long-ago days doing research on digital video compression, let me just say that the first rule is to always avoid fine detail if you can. Solid shirt or blouse, not checked. Unbusy backgrounds. The algorithms will make mistakes and waste bits if you give them the opportunity.
The Zoom software makes so many bad decisions about how to allocate the available bits it’s usually painful for me to watch.Report
fistbump of solidarity for NordikTrak owners though.
I am fat, and I hate the “ha ha that terrible person is fat and fat people are terrible” takes. I think there’s ample bad behavior under someone’s control to criticize them for. (I once “called” a colleague on making fat jokes in my presence, and he fundamentally responded “oh but you’re one of the GOOD ones” and I don’t even know what he meant by that. Because I work out? Because I worry about being fat? I don’t know).
But yeah, my general feeling is that for “bad” people there is sufficient in their attitudes or behavior you can criticize without fundamentally going “ha ha, you’re ugly and your mama dresses you funny”
Also green screens don’t always work that great; after a year of AAUW meetings over Zoom I saw enough people disappear weirdly into whatever background they chose that I’d rather just see someone’s messy living room or whatever without the uncanny valley effect of someone temporarily losing an arm to the ocean at Cabo.Report
What I find interesting is how resistant people are to learning this as a general principle. The vast majority of people get that even if you really hate this one particular black person, you don’t incorporate race into your criticisms of that person, because a) it’s not bad to be black, and b) implying that it is is hurtful to all black people and makes you look like a racist.
But a lot of people treat this as an idiosyncratic rule instead of a particular application of a general principle, so they’ll then turn right around and incorporate just about any other aspect of appearance into their insults: weight, height, facial structure, hair loss, skin tone (e.g. white people being too pale or too tan), etc.
We had people going on and on about how sexist it was to comment at all on Hillary Clinton’s appearance, and then go on to demonstrate, via criticisms of Donald Trump’s appearance, that sexism wasn’t as much of a factor as they had alleged.
I like my steak borderline (or actually!) raw, but lots of decent people like well-done beef, so you’d have to be a real jerk to publicly proclaim that it’s a character flaw when Donald Trump does it. Turns out a lot of people are real jerks.
There’s probably a lesson here about transfer of learning, but I’m unlikely to apply it to any other situation.Report
It’s elementary politeness not to make fun of people’s appearances.
Some people have demonstrated beyond doubt that they do not deserve elementary politeness.Report
Politeness towards the individual you are making fun of isn’t the only sufficient reason to refrain, though, is my pointReport
I’ve struggled with my weight for a long time. The pandemic did not help; I’m as heavy now as I’ve ever been and unhappy about it. I appreciate the message here — if you’re going to make fun of fat people, then you’re making fun of being fat, and if you think that’s fair game, then bear in mind that it may well include people you like as well as ones you dislike.
Paul Campos may not have been 100% right about the health risks of being heavy in his book the Obesity Myth, but I think he is definitely right about one thing — a lot of people have economic stakes in convincing heavy people that they not only should invest effort and money into becoming thin, but that it is possible with just a li-i-i-i-itle effort and will power. Home fitness equipment and weight loss food purveyors and gym memberships and all manner of other products and services are all sold on that idea. And it’s fucking hard to lose weight once you’ve put it on, even with good willpower and good food choices and good effort and good guidance with both diet and exercise. It’s fucking difficult under the best of circumstances.
There are so many many things about which Donald Trump has earned our derision, most profoundly how his appalling moral character has caused so much awful damage to America. We needn’t fat-shame him on top of that. There simply isn’t any need for it.Report