Tuesday, March 25, 2008  The Fat Hate Experiment  What would you
do?  ABC News put together a social experiment with telling
results. A fat actress sat on a boardwalk bench while two thin
actresses in bikinis verbally harassed her. The experiment was
intended to see how many people stopped to help.  According to
the article, only 5 out of the 60 people they determined had
noticed the altercation were willing to stop and speak up. One
passerby missed a great opportunity to set a good example for
her kids when she just hurried them past the scene without a
word.  They mixed up the experiment by making the aggressive
abusers male instead of female to see if that would increase the
number of people willing to stop and help. The article doesn't
give a number, but did mention a few cases where people (mostly
women) ignored the perceived threat to themselves to step in.
Two even stepped between the victim and her attackers and called
the police.  So there are several questions that come up for me
in trying to analyz