Naming and shaming: Liz Shaw is a bigot and a sorry excuse for a human being
I have just been sent a link to one of the most offensive outbursts of anti-fat prejudice I have seen in some time. Sadly, it is not possible to comment on the offending blog itself, so I shall write my response here.
First off, naming and shaming.
Liz Shaw is 26, is from Auckland, New Zealand, and claims to work in the media as a writer. She says that she writes about “politics and other important current events.” She blogs, apparently, to write about the topics she can’t write about at work (one can only hope because her editor wouldn’t publish such appallingly repugnant content). I’m not going to link to the blog because I don’t want to give her the traffic, but I’m going to reproduce the post in full. Trigger warning: relentless outpouring of blatant and abhorrent bigotry.
Originally posted November 3rd, 2012:
So apparently the latest Tui Billboard attacking overweight/obese people is being criticised as offensive. I’m sorry but I don’t find it offensive. I find the fact that people are overweight in the first place to be offensive.
Some people truly need to lighten up and realise it’s just an ad.
Not only that but Kim Dot Com is hideous and I actually think he looks like an inflated version of Antonie Dixon.
To be honest, I think Kim Dot Com’s wife married him for his money.
The Tui Billboard is not offensive and like I say, overweight people are. If overweight people are so unhappy with this billboard then how about instead of complaining about people calling them fat, they actually got off the couch, went to the gym and changed their diet? That would be more productive and they wouldn’t contribute to the rising health expenditure that New Zealand will face in coming years.
And mostly, overweight people are painful to look at. I won’t sit next to them on buses given the choice. Obese people have a choice, and they can either carry on blaming the world for their inability to manage their weight or they can do something about it.
There is no excuse for obesity. It’s just laziness and a lack of self respect.
Give Tui a break.
And the response I tried to post but couldn’t:
<Irony alert> I find homosexual people offensive. If homosexual people are so unhappy with people calling them f*****s, perhaps they should do more to fit in, dress straighter, speak more masculinely, not hang out in groups made up entirely of other homosexuals. Assimilate. What do they expect when they go about being all gay. I won’t sit next to them on buses given the choice. Queer people have a choice, and they can either carry on blaming the world for their inability to engage in non-deviant sexual behaviour or they can do something about it. <End irony>
On the other hand, I also find prejudiced bigots highly offensive. Some people truly need to lighten up and develop some humanity. I wouldn’t sit next to them on the bus given the choice. Bigots have a choice, and they can either carry on blaming the world for their own prejudices, or they can keep their frigging opinions to themselves. Give us all a break.
A little further digging turned up this wonderful Encyclopedia Dramatica listing on the wonder that is Liz Shaw, from her delusions of grandeur, to her inability to hold down a job, a relationship, or even a gym membership without being fired, ostracised, or banned, to her political aspirations (don’t worry – I doubt even her mother would vote for her). She is apparently an equal opportunity nutjob and not quite the brightest crayon in the box. In fact, your average Crayola Pink would no doubt come out slightly in front in a head-to-head intelligence test. I now worry less that this woman is a political journalist. Because she isn’t. And I may have been unfair in my ironic take on her anti-fat diatribe above, because she is apparently in favour of gay marriage, although doesn’t think these people should be allowed to raise children, at least not until further research has been conducted on their methods and how these might differ from those of normal people. She is also against being pregnant in public, or allowing children out of the house (unless they belong to her friends). Oh, and poor people. People are poor because of bad attitudes, not lack of money. It’s all about personal responsibility with our Lizzie.
Should you wish to contact Liz to engage in reasoned ideological debate, don’t bother. Should you wish to contact her for any other reason, you can try one of her twitter accounts (@LizShawTweets, @artisticlizshaw). Or just write something on the internet. Apparently she spends an hour a day googling herself, and will be quick to get back to you with an ALL CAPS OUTBURST OF INDIGNATION AND ABUSE and an attempt to get you banned from the internet, and probably the universe, forever. So thank you to the reader who sent me the link – what started out as a depressing exercise in anti-prejudice firefighting turned into a highly entertaining and educational foray into the World of Wacko.






December 7, 2014 at 7:34 PM

Damn – I was sorta hoping she had already commented on here. Suppose it is middle of the night in NZ right now…
I tweeted her the link – seemed only fair – and she did reply.
She stands by her comments. Of course she does. We would expect nothing less.
Liz sounds like our Ann Coulter, she’ll say anything to get attention…Ann’s latest was yelling at the top of her lungs that she would not fly on a plane with an African American Female Pilot because she probably got her job as some equal rights amendment quota crap and that in actuality she was not capable of flying a plane. Ahhh it’s so sad when kids don’t get the attention they needed as little ones that now they have to act out all over the place in hopes of filling that void.
Liz doesn’t actually write in the media, her job is to listen to media sources (radio, tv, etc) and summarise it for sale to companies that want to know what is being said about them in the media. Of course she spins this as her being a writer, when she’s nothing like one.
There was a whole entry about her job on ED that got removed as she complained and at that point the EDitors were sympathetic to her (see the talk page).
Anyway, glad you enjoyed our ED article, it’s pretty much 99% derived from things she’s actually said/done over the past 10 years and was put together as an archive of her exploits in order to warn others about her. She loves to issue C&D notices and things were vanishing from the internet, it’s really the one place that that sorta thing won’t hold.
She’s not a writer, she’s a monitor/transcription monkey for a media monitoring service’s outsource center, listening for mention of her employer’s clients in talkback and other such news media. You have nothing to fear regarding her ever amounting to anything in media, politics, or the entertainment industry. Jump on youtube and look up her ‘X-Factor NZ’ practice videos.
Ka kite!
You think this is bad, NZ is highly embarrassed to have produced this obnoxious fame-whore.
Sorry it had to inflict it’s mad dogma on you people. We have tried, in vain to have her carted off & locked up on several ocassions to no avail.
This is truely the tip of the iceberg. From her online rants to her constantly showing up to audition for talent shows like Idol & NZ’s got Talent (she doesn’t have talent-search the clips on youtube and laugh yourself senseless)To her foray into the “Adult Movie/Piccy” Business…whatever you do DO NOT GOOGLE HER PICTURES as you will have to poke out your minds eye with a sharp stick!
Sorry she’s upset you all, if we could deport her to Botswanna, we would, believe me…
entertaining read, but sadly despite the narcissistic personality disorder this woman appears to have, many others out there hold similar ill-informed and irrational and definitely not well thought out ideas.
It’s just really sad that human decency and respect appear to be optional character traits in the world at large.