You know, radio silence can be a good thing - sometimes.  Sometimes you have to maintain radio silence.  But there comes a time when you have to tell what needs to be told.  There comes a time when you have to let people know the facts and that's really what's being done for the short-of-stature in these broadcasts.  The facts are what you mustn't be afraid to confront.  You're a victim, and you should admit that to yourself.  You've been wronged as well, and you have to admit that to yourself too.  You've been a pawn in other people's games; none of this is that hard to admit.  It really isn't when you think about it.  Many or most of the short-statured are ashamed like little children.  You know why they feel like little children don't you? . . .

__________________________________________________________________

Broadcast of February 18, 2008 - 'Joe for you II'

. . . And that's what he really meant.  You could hear it.  And you know something, they wouldn't say this about people who are overweight.  You know, somebody asked me about weight and height and how they compare, well, you know when you give a description of someone, weight and height usually follow each other in consecutive order.  But they're very, very different and the differences are irreconcilable.  The simple fact of the matter is:  weight is a choice and height is not a choice.  That's the simple truth.  You can choose not to be overweight.  I understand that some people have glandular conditions.  I understand about conditioning.  I understand that obesity is a big problem in society today, and that there are different factors that affect how much weight one might carry around on their body.  Nonetheless as an individual you still have some control over how much fat you have on your body.  You don't choose or control your height.

___________________________________________________

Gary Coleman, Married Man 

By Joal Ryan

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:18:25 AM PST

Gary Coleman once vowed he'd never get married.  Well, what do 13-year-olds know?

The 40-year-old former child star has revealed to Inside Edition that he's been married since last summer to a woman who was barely alive when he starred in Different Strokes.

Coleman and Price exchanged vows on the occasion of her 22nd birthday last Aug. 28, on a Nevada mountaintop, the TV tabloid show reported Tuesday.

"Nobody was around but the minister, the preacher, the videographers, the photographer, the helicopter pilot and us, "  Coleman said . . .

Original article

[Webmasters note:  The article goes on to quote his wife as saying that, "he was 10 feet tall to me because he was sweet."  The associations of tall height with positives are absolutely relentless everywhere you look.  Also, the perceptions of the short-statured as extremely vulnerable is indicated in the way that his wife so freely mentions Colemans temper, "I don't like the violence, I really don't," Price said.  "He's got to damage something before his anger stops."  It's difficult to imagine any star's wife commenting so freely about violence in her spouse, especially this early in a marriage - unless of course they are divorced already.  It's as if she's not concerned about it too much because, 'Oh well, he's not big enough to hurt me anyway'.   Hollywood marriages typically are not long-standing affairs in any case.  Shall we take bets on when the bliss is going to end and Shannon proudly breathes a sigh of relief -ala Nicole Kidman- that she can now wear high heels again?]

____________________________________________________________________________

Broadcast of February 9, 2008 - 'Joe for you'

Hello.  My name is Joe Mangano and I’m gonna be talking about discrimination against the short-of-stature which is referred to as Heightism.  Heightism is the belief – usually – that the short-of-stature are inferior to the tall-of-stature or the tall-ER people or even average height people.  It’s a long-standing belief among humanity; it’s usually not verbalized, it’s usually accepted as gospel truth, and it’s usually set in stone and no one questions it.  No one has ever questioned it; no one has ever said anything about it.  The short-of-stature are victims very much like people of different races or religions or nationalities who’ve been victims, but no one has ever looked at it that way and very few short-statured people view it that way.  I happen to be one of the few short-statured people in this world that looks at it that way.  I’ve approached short-statured people and many of them, as I’ve mentioned on other occasions, are in a very bad state of denial, which is unfortunate.  The reason that they’re in such a bad state of denial . . .

_____________________________________________________________

At least 5ft 10ins, clean-shaven and driving a silver Mercedes:  The 20-point guide to what women REALLY want in their Mr Right     

by LUCY BALLINGER

Last updated at 21:18pm on 16th January 2008

He should be cleanshaven, good-looking and drive a silver Mercedes.  And most important of all more than 5ft 10in.*

Height is apparently more important than looks to women looking for Mr Right, a survey claims.

* italics webmasters

(Webmasters note:  The number one most important characteristic of 'Mr. Right' according to this article was the man's height.  Not looks, not weight, not hair, not muscles, not money, not education, not health, not race, not number of previous sexual partners.  These criteria seemed to be based on information from www.UKdating.com. It was HEIGHT that was most important to these women whoever they were.  The webmaster made a comment to this article among about 15 other comments or so.  The webmaster's comments have not as yet been posted.  We must assume there is some sort of problem with the webmaster's comments as viewed by the 'Daily Mail'.  The webmaster will try again shortly.)

_________________________________________________

THE CUTTING EDGE   

What's Fair?

Equity in Educational Practice

by Gary K. Clabaugh and Alison A. Clabaugh

 . . . Short Stature

Height, particularly in men, is another physical attribute associated with negative stereotypes and discrimination.  A 1992 study by researchers from Michigan State University demonstrated that short men are often judged inferior to tall men . . .

________________________________________________

Short men:  Live it up or live alone   

It should be so obvious to woman and short men alike.  Short men have it tougher in the dating arena, and really REALLY need to maximize their other attributes to level the field.  In other words, they had better have a great face, a stunning body and be very charming.  Of course, there is a chance of being labeled with the (inherently false) "Napoleon Syndrome" and hence "overcompensating".  However, I, and likely other self-respecting short men would much rather stick up for and improve ourselves and deal with the stigma.  The alternative is to be meek and "nice', and still get no dates while be "run over" by society in general.  Thanks, but no thanks . . .

________________________________________________

GLADWELL.COM

Why do we love tall men?   

This excerpt is from the part of "Blink" where I talk about the things that throw off our powers of rapid cognition.  I've just been talking about a test--called the IAT--which measures your level of "unconscious prejudice."  That's the kind of prejudice that you have that you aren't aware of, that affects the kinds of impresions and conclusions that you reach automatically, without thinking.

Or what if the person you are interviewing is tall?  On a conscious level, I'm sure that all of us don't think that we treat tall people any differently from short people.  But there's plenty of evidence to suggest that height--particularly in men--does trigger a certain set of very positive, unconscious associations . . .

__________________________________________________

Short People Are Vertically Deprived But Energy Efficient     

By Natalie Zellat Dyen
Published in the Philadephia Inquirer

I am a short person.  My mother is short, my father is short, and so are my sister's and my cousins and my aunts.  I grew up almost completely unaware of my shortcomings.  However, there were a few clues that I was longitudinally lacking.  For one thing, I reached my full height of 5'3" before the advent of the Petitie Department.  This meant that I had to trim approximately 5 inches of material from every article of clothing I bought.  I figure that the exesss material cut from garments purchased between 1958 and 1973 would make a quilt the size of North Dakota.

The other clue was the stature of my blind dates in high school and college.  Invariably the primary criteria for matchmaking was height . . .

________________________________________________________________________________

SHORT AND MALE DOCUMENTARY

October 30, 2007

The prejudice that short men face in society is monumental.  It is part of the scenery of life-meaning it is acceptable everywhere one may go.  Whether it's the United States, the Orient, or anywhere else in the world, heightism is a worldwide phenomenon that is rarely acknowledged, let alone discussed.  Film-makers Howard Goldberg and Ina Fichman tackle this most neglected of topics in their ground-breaking documentary that is soon to be aired titled, "S&M:  Short and Male".

(Instinct Films has recently posted two excerpts on youtube.  Joe Mangano was interviewed for this first time film expose of Heightism.  That's the webmaster being interviewed in the New York City taxi in the first clip.)

S&M:  Short and Male - Women Hate Short Sperm - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRCQJO77U3I 
       

S&M:  Short and Male - Heightism in China - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqXK6IY5gPg

Supportfortheshort will post an air date as soon as it becomes available.

___________________________________________________________________

Broadcast of October 7, 2007 – ‘The Height of Whose Life?’

This is Joe Mangano.  There isn’t a great deal of literature out there about the topic that is the focus of these broadcasts, and that topic of course is heightism.  I’ve only found a few hundred articles in the last 6 years or so.  So scanty is the information on heightism, that if you did a Google search for the word ‘heightism’ and then did one each for racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other kind of ‘ism’, you could think of, you’d see the tremendous disparity in the number of hits, an almost astronomical disparity.  Many of the articles are dismissive of the whole topic.  Some even joke about the ridiculousness of even discussing the topic at all, and that really folks, we should get back to more important things, like who won the latest Yankees-Red Sox game or what happened in the last episode of ‘Sex and The City’. 

You know, what information is out there, I take and integrate it with my own experience-which is considerable.  It’s unfortunate that much of the discourse on some groups on the Internet is of such low quality, but I guess that’s to be expected given the nature of this topic.

As you can imagine, this was a very difficult time for me. On a daily basis I was called words like "midget," "shrimp," "small-fry," "shorty," and a number of other derogatory terms. Life on the playground wasn't easy either. I was always the last one chosen to play on any sports team.  I was laughed at in gym because I was so much smaller than everybody, that I couldn't run as fast as everybody else. Basketball was a joke. I was always pointed and laughed at whenever I had the ball in gym class.

I was so small that the gym teacher wouldn't allow me to climb across the stall bars like all the other children. Instead, I had to climb up, hang for a few seconds, and then climb down. So, again, I was singled out because of my height.

Take all these factors, and it's no wonder that I became a bad student. I was detached and alone most of the time, and the last place in the world I wanted to be was at school . . .

. . . When I hear of studies that conclude that short kids don't suffer psychologically because of their height I know they are mistaken. You see, these short kids have to be tough; to build up a thick skin just to have the confidence to go to school everyday. So, when they're in a study and somebody is asking them whether or not their life is different because they're short, what these kids have to tell themselves and others is: "No, of course, I'm perfectly normal." And this comes out only after a great deal of trust and time is spent with each of these patients, may the truth possibly surface. And, in most cases, it doesn't. . . . Kids do not want to open themselves up to that sort of interrogation in a clinical setting. It's just not going to happen. . . . What bothered me most as a child was that I was treated according to my height and not my age. At age seven, people spoke to me as though I were four or five years old.

Deno Andrews’ statements at a meeting of the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee of The Department of Health and Human Services Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, June 10, 2003.

In the same meeting Dr. Margaret MacGillivray in concluding statements displayed a video of a former patient of hers.  The patient stated:

You know, you can blow it off when it's just your older brother making fun of you, but my friends and my peers were always saying, "Oh my God, she's so short," and "Oh, you're not old enough to be hear," and like normal people that I passed on the street, or, you know, when I was shopping in the mall didn't take me seriously . . .

Webmaster’s note:  Never in this 8-hour meeting was the issue of discrimination or prejudice by society against the short of stature even mentioned or addressed.  There didn’t appear to be any psychologists or psychiatrists on the panel either. (I guess they were busy treating those poor disadvantaged Tallers)

___________________________________________________________________

" . . . After what happened I'm not sure you want to work with me again . . ."

          - Matthew Campisi's message to me in September of 2005

________________________________________________________________________