Another group with a grievance

Albinos lash out at the Da Vinci Code. It seems the main bad guy in the story is pigmentally challenged.

Michael McGowan, an albino who heads the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, said "The Da Vinci Code" will be the 68th movie since 1960 to feature an evil albino.

"Silas is just the latest in a long string," McGowan said. "The problem is there has been no balance. There are no realistic, sympathetic or heroic characters with albinism that you can find in movies or popular culture."

Paul Bettany, the actor who plays the evil monk Silas, says it isn't the character's pigmentation that makes him evil.

"I thought, this man's a psychopath, and he's not a psychopath because he's an albino," Bettany said. "He's an amalgamation of everything that sort of happened to him in his life. How his father treated him and the things he saw his father do to his mother, and he happens to be preternaturally gifted at hurting people. ...

"I think it's no more a comment on albinos than it is on monks, and no more a comment on monks than it is on people who wear sandals," Bettany said.

Sandals? We can still make fun of people who wear sandals, can't we? Especially sandals with socks. And people with unsightly toenails.

Via memeorandum.