Because little people are just as capable of getting into frivolous, bullshit lawsuits as anyone else, a couple of dwarfs (it’s what they call themselves, I swear!) are suing Joel McHale and E! Entertainment after Joel made a spoof on his show, The Soup, of TLC‘s regular television line-up that just so happened to coincide with the fact that just so happened to apply to them.
Cara and Gibson Reynolds are dwarfs who struggled for years to have children. One child died a day after birth, but they were finally able to conceive a healthy baby. The Reynolds’ did an interview with the Associated Press about dwarf couples who want to screen their embryos for genetic defects in an effort to intentionally have healthy, dwarf children. They say the article and photo of them was limited to the AP article (reprinted on MSNBC.com).
Fast forward to 2009, when McHale and company did a spoof on The Soup titled, Fertile Little Tattooed Pageant Parents Who Enjoy Baking. McHale said it was the newest reality show, and then proceeded to show the AP photo of the Reynolds, saying they are “happy dwarfs … that can’t stop procreating.”
And it got worse. The Soup then allegedly showed a woman purported to be Cara in labor, in the process of giving birth in a bathroom.
Cara claims the piece was so upsetting, she suffered, “depression, insomnia, upset stomach, sleep interference and experiencing feelings of shame and degradation.” SOURCE
I’d like to point out that Joel wasn’t making fun of either of them, but rather pointing out that TLC just has a habit of making all their shows about tattoos, cakes, little people, beauty pageants and, of course, popping out babies, which is apparently a phenomena so uncommon we need cameras on every last one of them STAT! And more likely than not, the reason they went with that photo was because they typed “Pregnant little people” into Google and SURPRISE! That’s the first thing to pop up. So really, this has nothing to do with Joel mocking them, just that Joel made a joke that pissed them off so everyone else has to suffer through the bullshit with them. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go find the big empty jar of all the fucks I could give.