Going out on their own

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 11 Comments

Photograph by Bill Keay/Vancouver Sun

When you pull into the Tsawwassen First Nation in suburban Vancouver, the first thing you notice is a brand-new TransLink bus stop serving Metro Vancouver. It’s the first, tangible benefit of a treaty that came into effect last spring, says Chief Kim Baird, a 38-year-old mother of three. Even a year ago, you’d never have seen Vancouver’s blue and white city buses plowing through here; there was no public transit at all. Another change: Tsawwassen was the only First Nation to receive federal stimulus funds last fall. The $6-million cheque went to kick-start a new industrial park. It’s another opportunity the band would have missed were it still under the Indian Act, says Baird, who has a quick laugh and a shock of curly brown hair. But with the treaty, the Tsawwassen acquired the legal standing of a municipality, making them eligible for funding.

Soon, the reserve itself will effectively disappear. Members will begin paying income tax and GST. And from here on, Tsawwassen—not Indian and Northern Affairs—will control its development. Sure, Baird admits to beginner’s jitters. “If anything goes wrong, there’s nobody to bail them out like before—a huge risk,” explains treaty expert Doug McArthur, who teaches public policy at Simon Fraser University. But fear can be a good motivator. Tsawwassen had a draft budget finalized by fall—months ahead of the February deadline. An arm’s-length economic development corporation is already up and running (the former head of the Vancouver Port Authority was hired as chair). It’s exploring opportunities ranging from a waste-to-energy trash incinerator, a retirement community, and a massive warehousing facility for shipping containers, linked to the expansion of the nearby Roberts Bank Superport.

In a matter of months, the Tsawwassen have managed to deep-six the Indian Act, which made natives wards of the state, and has frozen Aboriginal institutional development in time at 1876. They’re not alone. B.C.’s Gitxsan, going a step further, are petitioning Ottawa to drop their “Indian” status altogether. They’re willing, they say, to hand over reserves, tax exemptions, free housing and, yes, the ambition of a separate order of government in return for a bigger prize: a share of resources on ancestral land. “We seek no special status or parallel society,” the coastal tribe announced in half-page ads that ran last summer in the Vancouver Sun and Globe and Mail. “We wish to live as ordinary Canadians in our own way in a multicultural society. Further, we wish to pay our own way.” This they’ll do through joint ventures in oil and gas, logging, eco-tourism and run-of-river power projects, they say. Simply, the status quo is not working, says chief negotiator Elmer Derrick; his people have been brought to their hands and knees.

Continue…

Making their bed

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 45 Comments

Photograph by Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press

The British Columbia government’s decision to test the legality of Canada’s 120-year-old polygamy law led to a shocking revelation for Karen and her two male partners. The 37-year-old Winnipeg-area mother, her husband of 15 years and a second male partner concede their arrangement is unconventional. She calls it a plural union based on equality, not religious ideas of male dominance. What she didn’t realize, until the B.C. court reference drew attention to the issue, was that they’re breaking the law by sharing a home. “This has been a real learning experience,” she says.

Karen, who doesn’t want her surname used in order to protect her children, is part of a constituency of polyamorists, one of many groups seeking standing in the B.C. Supreme Court. The case will determine if the polygamy law—Section 293 of the Criminal Code—is constitutional. It was triggered by the province’s failure to prosecute two polygamous bishops in the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, B.C., but its outcome could affect the rights of thousands.

Some 16 groups have submitted affidavits seeking permission to argue for or against 293 when a trial date is set—proving, if nothing else, that polygamy creates strange bedfellows. Some groups see the polygamy law as the foundation of the traditional family and a defence against the exploitation of girls forced into multiple marriage, as the province alleged happened in Bountiful. Others argue the law is unenforceable, does nothing to help the women of Bountiful, and that it imposes a moral code out of step with Canada’s modern, multicultural society.

Continue…

Inside McLuhan’s head

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 10 Comments

Photograph by P.J. Salkovitch/ Canadian Press

“I knew going into it that this wasn’t going to be a straight biography,” says Douglas Coupland about his new study of Marshall McLuhan. What the Vancouver-based author has concocted instead is a historical mosaic that borrows heavily from McLuhan’s inimitable riffing style—that is, to dance non-linearly around ideas as a means of forming a distinct theory. Coupland also adds a healthy dose of his own literary signature to the mix—asides, like copies of online user-reviews of McLuhan’s works that appear in between chapters, seem at first glance peripheral to the subject at hand but later turn out to speak a distinct truth about it.

To be sure, this is still a biographical work. It’s just that, for Coupland, the things people already know about McLuhan—his famous phrases “global village” and “the medium is the message,” plus his cameo in Annie Hall—aren’t as interesting as, say, the great thinker’s biological and genetic makeup. And so, instead of analyzing McLuhan’s 1962 masterwork The Gutenberg Galaxy, Coupland investigates the brain that composed it.

Marshall McLuhan’s brain was fuelled by fresh blood from the heart through not one but two arteries at the base of his skull, a trait in the mammalian world found mostly in cats and rarely in human beings. As well, people in Marshall’s family tended to die of strokes. Marshall himself had countless small strokes during his lifetime—sometimes in front of a classroom of students, where he’d suddenly gap out for a few minutes and then return to the world.

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Mailbag: The Prime Minister answers more of your questions

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 8:32 AM - 15 Comments

Last night, the Prime Minister, you know, responded on, you know, YouTube to a whack of, you know, questions submitted by, you know, Canadians. Today, the Voice in the PM’s Head answers more of them.

•••

Dear Prime Minister:

What was the closest you came to being elected class president and are you still bitter? – Neil Colmer

Neil –

Well, let me just say this: Like many young individuals, I did take a shot at running for students’ council – but I fell a little short and I certainly harbor no grudges or ill-will in that regard.

I mean, sure: some would point out that Courteney Gilchrist basically stole the election from me. Certainly her platform was, by any measure, fiscally irresponsible – anyone with Grade 3 math could tell you that one Wagon Wheel per child per day would have bankrupted Mrs. Forgeron’s class treasury by November.

But all of Cootie’s – I mean, Courteney’s – promises were like that: just ridiculous. I’m no expert, but common sense dictates that putting root beer in the drinking fountains would Continue…

Free speech and propaganda (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 8:26 AM - 95 Comments

In something of a surprise—at least to me as I sat in the gallery waiting for Francine Lalonde’s bill to be debated—the NDP stood Tuesday evening and voted in favour of a Liberal motion that directs an end to the practice of ten-percenters. Those votes, together with those of the Bloc Quebecois, were just enough for the motion to pass by a count of 140-137.

Breslinomics

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 8:14 AM - 0 Comments

From 1998, Jimmy Breslin delivers a wonderful lecture on his life in newspapering. I offer this to you for two reasons. First, I happened to be in the U.S. when C-SPAN first broadcast it, and I found it so evocative of a vanishing era that I called C-SPAN up and ordered a VHS copy of it. Students of journalism, or fans or skeptics of the form, will enjoy watching it.

Second, that sort of thing will be easier now because starting today, C-SPAN is making all 160,000 hours of its video archive available online for free. With a very good search engine. Here: go crazy.

Late-night is for frat boys only

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 1:00 AM - 11 Comments

Jay Leno is back on The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien is gone, and fans are arguing over which version of the show is better. But no matter how often the host changes, one thing never seems to change: Leno currently has no women on his writing staff—when Sarah Palin performed a stand-up routine for him, her jokes were written by men—and neither did O’Brien during his Tonight Show tenure. In late-night comedy, shows can go years without a woman in the writers’ room, and things have gotten worse in recent years: David Letterman’s first head writer was a woman (Merrill Markoe), but he didn’t have any female writers last year. Markoe told Maclean’s that when she started in the business, “everyone made fun of ‘tokenism.’ Every show had its token one to two women.” In today’s late-night world, she’s starting to “look back at tokenism fondly as a time of enlightenment.”

Why don’t late-night shows hire women to write for them? The simplest reason is that most of the writers who apply for the job are men: “When I started the show with Dave in the early ’80s, very few women submitted work,” Markoe says. But even today, when there are more female stand-up comics and other women who Markoe describes as “very familiar with the general sensibility” of late-night comedy, things haven’t been any better. “Women are equal watchers of those shows,” fumes Melissa Silverstein, blogger and founder of womenandhollywood.com, “yet are somehow not thought of as capable of contributing behind the scenes.”

If hosts do hire a woman, it’s often because they knew her already. Craig Ferguson, who hosts The Late Late Show, has one female staff writer: his sister Lynn, a respected comedian in her own right. Markoe was romantically involved with Letterman at one point, and when Jimmy Kimmel broke up with Sarah Silverman, tabloids reported that he was dating his writer Molly McNearney. Without a prior relationship, it can take a long time for a woman to win the trust of the people who do the hiring; Jill Goodwin, who got a job last month as Letterman’s first female writer in years, was an assistant on the show for almost a decade. “People hire people they’re comfortable with,” says Silverstein, and in practice, it seems like hosts aren’t comfortable with women they haven’t met repeatedly.

Continue…

The Commons: ‘This is not an easy issue’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:50 PM - 70 Comments

The Scene. It being 5:55pm, the Speaker moved on to time allotted for private members’ business, specially the resumption of debate on bill C-384. Approximately 250 of the 277 members, gathered previously to vote on a pair of motions, collected their belongings and departed for dinner.

The Speaker waited a few minutes for the House to settle, then called on the Bloc’s Francine Lalonde to restate herself. Clutching her notes with both hands, she stood and explained that C-384, her proposal, sought to amend the Criminal Code for the purposes of decriminalizing euthanasia or medically assisted suicide. Continue…

The Internet, now on computers

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 8:20 PM - 64 Comments

About 70 minutes late, the Prime Minister’s interview with the masses is now online.

For those who wish to read along, here is the transcript distributed by the Prime Minister’s Office. Continue…

It's come to this: Jazz recommendations for Paul Wells

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 6:44 PM - 4 Comments

I knew I’d get in trouble with Peter Hum when I wrote, in passing, that I’m not listening to much jazz these days, “because studying classical music takes up so much of my spare time and because — might as well say it — so little contemporary jazz rewards serious attention.” Peter writes a very good, unflaggingly enthusiastic blog on contemporary jazz for the Ottawa Citizen, and sure enough, he’s come up with a bunch of recommendations for me. And by extension, for you. (I’m amused that one of the recommended CDs is by Jim Lewis, who used to give me trumpet lessons in Sarnia. I worked hard at moving the joints of my fingers the way Jim did, paid insufficient attention to the more important information he was trying to convey, and washed up in journalism.)

Fair’s fair. I’m familiar (wearily, horribly familiar) with many of the musicians he names, but none of the specific CDs. I will listen to several in good faith, and get back to you all. I have been hesitant to write about the problems I perceive in modern jazz, on the, I think, well-founded principle that nobody cares, but you don’t have to read what will follow if you’re one of those, like, 98% of readers.

People get ready

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 6:32 PM - 14 Comments

Have you missed me? I’ve been away. Hunkered down writing. Now that that’s done, I’m looking forward to tomorrow, Wednesday, when I’ll lead one of those Live! Online! Chats! we like to do here at macleans.ca. Andrew Coyne did one, and then I think he did another, and Aaron Wherry did one, and then the terrible accusatory hand of our web editor pointed at me. So my number’s up.

Join us here, at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern daylight time, as I sit at a keyboard and take your questions. We’re leaving this wide open, but I expect much of the conversation will be about Canadian federal politics and/or my stunning insights into professional hockey.

King of (post-mortem) Pop is back!

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 4:50 PM - 1 Comment

Michael Jackson just signed a new long-term record deal with Sony, and will be releasing an album of never-before-heard songs in November. It’s true! Well, not MJ the man, but rather MJ the estate. The record-setting $250 million deal gives Sony the right to the star’s unreleased tracks, as well as the concert movie he was making at the time of his death in June. It also allows Sony to use Jackson’s music in video games, advertisements, DVDs, amusement park rides and elsewhere. Said Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music’s Columbia Epic Label Group: “We’re dedicated to protecting this icon’s legacy and we’re thrilled that we can continue to bring his music to the world for the foreseeable future.” Since his death, Jackson has sold 31 million albums. But will this post-mortem popularity endure? Here’s something to suggest that it might: Elvis Presley’s estate takes in between $50 million and $60 million a year.

The Guardian

Bye bye Pepsi

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 3:58 PM - 7 Comments

Pepsi is about to become the first cola company to cut its high-calorie soft drinks from schools worldwide. The move follows a successful U.S. program meant to cut childhood obesity rates which saw both PepsiCo and rival Coca-Cola Co. remove their products from the country’s schools. The World Heart Federation has been negotiating a deal with Pepsi to expand the idea worldwide for the past year. Instead of the soft drinks, the company will now stock refrigerators and vending machines in primary schools with water, juice, and milk, but will also sell low-calorie soft drinks in secondary schools. Coca-Cola has also changed its sales policy, and now pledges to only sell its drinks in primary schools where districts or parents ask, but hasn’t made mention of secondary schools.

CBC News

A seven-day limit

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 3:51 PM - 42 Comments

Jack Layton will table the following motion tomorrow.

“That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons to support such a prorogation.”

Parks & Recreation Avoids the Scott Adsit Problem

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 3:43 PM - 1 Comment

I’m a little late discussing the departure of Paul Schneider (Mark) from Parks & Recreation. Here’s the long Los Angeles Times interview with co-creator Mike Schur, where he says that this was a mutual decision. (He also that they originally considered making him a guy who could leave and come back, presumably like Ryan on The Office.) Basically, Schneider’s movie career is picking up, and as Schur says, these are the kind of movies that don’t shoot during the TV off-season. And Mark is not the most necessary of characters. So he’ll leave, the show will bring in a bunch of stars for mini-arcs — including Rob Lowe and Natalie Morales — and his character will probably return for guest appearances next year.

I think I like the decision to drop him from the show instead of letting him hang around without much to do. As Schur says “well, the way the character’s gone…we were all on the same page here and we decided to write the character out.” Mark really seemed linked to the show’s original conception as a relative of The Office. As the show has taken on its own identity, most of the funny stuff is going to the, well, funny characters, and the show doesn’t really need the Jim/Pam dynamic they were setting up with Ann and Mark, or even the sort of parody version of Jim/Pam that they originally had with Leslie’s crush on Mark. And he was also a character who was famously rewritten quite a bit, tinkered with after the underwhelming initial test screenings, and never quite settled into a clear characterization.

This constantly happens, of course; we’ve talked about it many times. A character is set up to fill a role, and when the show finds itself, that role is no longer needed or is filled by someone else. Scott Adsit on 30 Rock is the most notable modern example, a character who was supposed to be one of two forces pulling Liz Lemon in opposite directions — the pathetic but nice producer on the one hand, the ruthless, anti-artistic but brilliant corporate executive on the other. Then the show stopped having anything to do with the process of putting on a comedy show and threw all its relationship eggs in the Liz/Jack basket; these were the right decisions, but it left Scott Adsit with a nothing part. There are two things a show can do in that situation: leave him around with no clear role, Potsie-style, or write him out. If the actor can get lots of work elsewhere, as Schneider apparently can, then it’s not surprising that he and the producers would mutually agree on the latter option.

(Some have argued that the show doesn’t really need Rashida Jones either, and she does seem a bit tonally out of whack with the show as it’s developed — particularly since she doesn’t have a huge amount of comic range. But while I could see her leaving eventually, she’s well-known enough that the show would presumably try harder to keep her and find more stuff for her to do.)

A call for justice from Bangladesh

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 2:27 PM - 21 Comments

Photograph by Patrick Andrade/ Reuters

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was 27 years old when her father, the first prime minister of Bang­ladesh, was slaughtered along with most of her family in 1975. The army officers who shot them installed a military government and kicked off 15 years of coups, counter-coups, and dictatorship. Hasina, who was out of the country at the time of the massacre, has long sought justice for her family. In January, five former soldiers convicted of the murders were hanged in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, following a lengthy legal process. Six of the convicted men are still at large. At least one of them, Nur Chowdhury, lives in Canada.

Bangladesh has repeatedly requested that Canada extradite Chowdhury, whose refugee application has been rejected in this country. But Canada has so far refused, because Chowdhury has been sentenced to death in Bangladesh. Canada typically will not transfer a suspected criminal to a foreign country without a guarantee that he will not be executed. “He is a citizen of Bangladesh, and according to the rule of law, he got the death sentence,” said Hasina, in an exclusive interview with Maclean’s. “Justice should be done and the rule of law implemented, not only for my family, but for the people of Bangladesh.”

Hasina said that this dispute will not negatively affect relations between Canada and Bangladesh. Canada is an advocate for human rights, she said. She understands Ottawa’s motives. “But these killers violated human rights,” she said. “They killed women and children. So why should [Canada] keep him? If they want to keep the killers, we can send all the killers of this country to take shelter in Canada and other countries.”

“The time has come”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 2:02 PM - 0 Comments

The line of U.S. generals supporting either a repeal or a review of the anti-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy just added a big name: General David Petraeus. The man in charge of the war in Afghanistan is in favour of a review. His remarks to a congressional committee come weeks after Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said repealing the law—which prevents gays from openly serving in uniform—is the “right thing to do.”

Huffington Post

For Students of the Laugh Track

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 1:47 PM - 0 Comments

I’ve talked a few times about the differences between real laughter and canned laughter in television (which are often spoken of as though they’re the same thing) without really illustrating what I mean. So I thought I’d put together a video to give an idea of how a multi-camera TV soundtrack is enhanced in post-production. I had a copy of an old WKRP episode in two different soundtracks: the “unsweetened” version, with no sounds added that were not recorded live on the set, and the “sweetened” version for final broadcast, with extra laughter and music added. I already showed a scene from this episode with and without music. What I’ve done here is put some excerpts side by side, along with some captions pointing out what’s been added and whether the laughter is real or canned.

Now, the sound of a laugh track was different and more obvious 30 years ago, and there were differences in terms of sound mixing. (Today, it’s more likely for ambient sounds, like crowd background noise, to be added. Back then there was basically nothing except the dialogue and laughter.) But the basic differences seem to be the same. First, in the final mix, the sound of the real audience laughter is sometimes a bit different, perhaps because of added echo. And sometimes the mixer adds in a canned laugh track, though this is not one of those episodes where the audience didn’t laugh much. But you’ll notice that the reason for the added laughter isn’t always the same from clip to clip. Reasons for adding canned laughter include:

1) The audience didn’t laugh at a joke and the producers want to keep it in. (Sometimes because it wasn’t funny, as Woody Allen protests to Tony Roberts in Annie Hall, but sometimes because the joke was too much of a throwaway for the audience to laugh at it.) The extra laughter allows the joke to stay in without giving the impression that it fell flat compared to the jokes that did get big laughs.

2) The scene, or part of a scene, was done as a pickup after the audience went home, and the laugh track is inserted to make it fit, sonically, with the rest of the episode.

3) In a couple of spots in this video, very mild, almost inaudible laughs are inserted to cover a long pause and keep the sound from being “dead.” It’s very similar to the way one-camera shows use ambient noise or — especially — music.

4) Sometimes a laugh is extended a bit so it will last into the next shot. This is done to create a smoother transition between two shots that might come from different takes.

5) Finally, in the last clip from this video, the audience applauds after a joke. The producers apparently didn’t want the applause, so they replaced the applause with a laugh track. So in this case the laugh track is used to tone down the audience response, which is something that is still done today.

The editor of this show, by the way, was a very young Andy Ackerman (Seinfeld, Old Christine, Curb). I don’t know who was in charge of the sound mixing.

Special Mailbag: Dear Prime Minister

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 24 Comments

The Prime Minister is scheduled to go on YouTube tonight to answer the questions of Canadians and be mistaken for the grown-up Star Wars Kid. If you submit a question that doesn’t get answered, if you see one there you wish he’d replied to, or if you have any other query for Stephen Harper, type it below. I’ll answer a bunch on Wednesday in my Twitter alter ego as The Voice in the PM’s Head.

Barenaked pictures

By Andrew Tolson - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 1:29 PM - 0 Comments

With last year’s departure of Stephen Page, the Barenaked Ladies could have faded into Canadian music folklore. But they’re back with a new album, All in Good Time, and a renewed sense of purpose. I spent an afternoon with the Ladies as they rehearsed for the their upcoming tour.

MPs grill Toyota

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:38 AM - 1 Comment

Senior Toyota executives were in Ottawa today to answer questions about the company’s handling of a series of high-profile recalls that affected some of Toyota’s most popular vehicles. Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles globally, including hundreds of thousands Canada, because of concerns that gas pedals can become stuck beneath floor mats, or because of flaws in the gas pedal assembly itself that can cause the mechanism to stick or return slowly to the idle position. Echoing criticisms leveled by U.S. lawmakers, some members of the House transport committee accused the automotive giant of dragging its feet on what many consider to be troubling safety defects. But Stephen Beatty, the managing director of Toyota Canada, stressed that the company moved quickly to address the issue as soon as it was brought to its attention last October, and has worked closely with Transport Canada throughout the process. He also stressed that, despite reports to the contrary, Toyota has been unable to identify any problems with its vehicle electronics that could lead to instances of sudden unintended acceleration. Yoshi Inaba, the president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor North America, also appeared before the committee to stress that the company is committed to building vehicles that are safe and reliable.

Toronto Star

Tiger comeback confirmed

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 9 Comments

Tiger Woods has chosen the grandest of stages for his golf comeback: Augusta National. On hiatus since November—when news broke that he was cheating on his wife with more than a dozen mistresses—Woods announced this morning that he will return to action at The Masters, which begins April 8. “The Masters is where I won my first major and I view this tournament with great respect,” he said in a released statement. “After a long and necessary time away from the game, I feel like I’m ready to start my season at Augusta.” Woods has undergone almost two months of inpatient therapy for sex addiction, and says that “although I’m returning to competition, I still have a lot of work to do in my personal life.”

USA Today

Stoners demonstrate surprising initiative

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 92 Comments

The Prime Minister’s YouTube chat is this evening at 7pm. He will apparently “answer a selection of your top-voted questions.”

Sorted by popularity, the top four questions at present all relate to marijuana.

Bias against the obese is prevalent: experts

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:24 AM - 17 Comments

Overweight people face a huge stigma, writes Harriet Brown in the New York Times, adding that some of the worst discrimination comes from medical professionals themselves: according to Yale University researcher Rebecca Puhl, who studies the stigma of obesity, more than half of 620 primary care doctors in one study described obese patients as “awkward, unattractive, ugly, and unlikely to comply with treatment,” suggesting they may even receive different kinds of medial treatment. Yet discrimination based on race, sex, or almost any other factors is considered unacceptable, she notes. Puhl said she was described at how openly doctors revealed their biases: “If I was trying to study gender or racial bias, I couldn’t use the assessment tools I’m using, because people wouldn’t be truthful,” she said. “They’d want to be more politically correct.” Indeed, last summer, cardiac surgeon Dr. Delos M. Cosgrove even told the newspaper that, if he could do so legally, he would refuse to hire the obese. Obese people tend to avoid doctor visits, Brown notes, which can create chronic stress, high blood pressure, diabetes and other medical problems. One study showed that women who believe they’re overweight suffer more from mental and physical illness, no matter how much they weigh.

New York Times