Pigging Out Is OK When It Comes to Helping Charity

Who else but Roseanne and Tom Arnold, America’s burly comic couple, would come up with a way to indulge their favorite hobby--eating as much as they can as fast as they can--to raise money for charity?

The eat-a-thon, billed as pitting the television celebrities against professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and Planet Hollywood President Robert Earl, headlined a $250-per-person fund-raiser at Planet Hollywood on Sunday night at South Coast Plaza Village.

At the last minute, however, some heavyweight substitutes sat in for Roseanne Arnold and Earl, and the foursome that remained gorged their way through chocolate milkshakes and rich desserts for 30 minutes, between gulps of water.

The winning team was to get $10,000, to be donated to prevention of child sexual abuse. In fact, all of the money raised Sunday was to go to the Tom and Roseanne Arnold Foundation, which was formed to provide money to nonprofit organizations that assist victims of incest and sexual abuse.

The Arnolds established the foundation to underscore concern over the problem of child molestation, which involves one in five children before they reach the age of 18. Both have announced they were abused as children, and on Sunday night they pledged $1 million to their foundation.

“Rosie and I are survivors and we have been very fortunate to have the right kind of help, and we’d like to spread that around,” Tom Arnold said.

Said Roseanne Arnold: “People do not take it seriously nor do they want to hear one word about it for the most part. . . . We’re on the side of children.”

Earl said the idea for the “Battle of the Bulge Charity Eating Contest” came up--where else?--during dinner when Earl and Roseanne Arnold noticed they were both racing through their meals.

On that night, the gluttony lasted well past the main course, when Roseanne Arnold challenged Earl’s appetite by taunting, “I can eat more than you!” before both pigged out on dessert.

Well before Sunday night’s charity face-stuffing finale, however, bidding was held for the chance to appear in episodes of “Roseanne,” “Saturday Night Live” and several motion pictures, one starring Sylvester Stallone and one with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A walk-on in the Schwarzenegger flick called “True Lies” drew a $5,000 donation. Stallone’s “The Specialist” brought $4,000. But a cameo on “Roseanne” had bidders waving their cards wildly, fetching $10,000 for one episode and $9,000 for another.

A silent auction was also held.

The crowd included celebrities Kirkland, Gary Coleman, Danny Bonaduce and Phyllis Diller.

In 1991, when speaking to a group of incest survivors in Denver, Roseanne Arnold said publicly for the first time that her parents had sexually abused her during her childhood in Salt Lake City. Her parents have denied the claim. Tom Arnold has said that he, too, was sexually abused.

The disclosure by former Miss America Marilyn Van Derber Alter that she had been molested as a child prompted Roseanne Arnold to make her announcement.

Roseanne Arnold’s disclosure added to a long list of adults who say they suffered from repressed memory syndrome, but them became able years later to recall instances of abuse. Roseanne Arnold said she remembered the abuse 30 years after it happened.

Skeptics regarding repressed memory syndrome say that many cases cannot be substantiated and that the supposed recollections can be distortions of any unpleasantry experienced during childhood.

The Arnolds denied published reports that they had sought, as a couple, to legally marry one of their employees--assistant Kim Silver--and had given her a 5-carat diamond engagement ring.

“It must have been a boring news day,” Tom Arnold said. “It was a little harmless fun, obviously, but I think a lot of the media had a good time with it and were pretty funny about it.”