The Little People of America want to ban the use of the word “midget” on television!
The LPA discussed the issue at their annual conference in Brooklyn on Monday, stating that using the term “midget” is discriminatory and filing a complaint with the FCC.
Michael Petruzzelli, the president of LPA’s Long Island chapter, is grateful for the government’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act to accommodate little people, but, he says “we haven’t made those social changes to take those offensive words out of our vocabulary.”
Most recently, the LPA were angered by the use of the “M-Word” on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice with a challenge in which the contestants produced a laundry soap ad called Jesse James and the Midgets, where suggestions of “bathing little people in the detergent and hanging them to dry” were made.
But the LPA’s protest in the form of e-mails and phone calls to the FCC, Donald Trump and NBC were all ignored.
Continued Petruzzelli: “It’s not acceptable to call people the N-word, just as it’s not acceptable to call people the M-word. The chosen term now is L.P., or little person.”
Fight on!
[Image via WENN.]