Posts tagged Morons
Moron of the Week #10
Jan 31st
I started the Moron of the Week series nearly three years ago, but unfortunately didn’t keep up with it. It’s been nearly two years since the last one and, in that time, I’ve considered reviving it. After this past week, I realize now is a perfect time. I hope I can keep up with it this time. We’ll see.
This time around, it’s a collective award, going to a group of people for a particularly moronic event in California, of all places. The mental faculties of one elementary school student’s parent, apparently already in a feeble state, overloaded when said student discovered the compound noun oral sex in Merriam Webster’s 10th Edition dictionary. The parent, most likely imagining the child was now in danger of suffering a horrific destiny (like becoming a homosexual pedophile, or worse, a liberal), lodged a complaint with the Menifee Union School District. Officials there promptly banned the book from all schools in their district.
The Moron of the Week is not the parent, despite the objection to a child being exposed to reality a dictionary definition. The real morons here are the officials of the Menifee Union School District. These people are supposed to be in charge of ensuring children get a solid education. If they start censoring books based upon the complaints of parents, you can’t help but lose confidence in their competency. Fortunately, not all parents in the school district agree with the decision.
“Censorship in the schools, really? Pretty soon the only dictionary in the school library will be the Bert and Ernie dictionary,” said Emanuel Chavez, the parent of second- and sixth-grade students. “If the kids are exposed to it, it’s up to the parents to explain it to them at their level.”
Don’t get too happy about Mr. Chavez’s reasoned response, though. As long as the reasonable people aren’t the ones in authority, this sort of stupidity is bound to happen again and again. Consider the words of school board member and elementary school teacher Randy Freeman:
…it’s “a prestigious dictionary that’s used in the Riverside County spelling bee, but I also imagine there are words in there of concern.”
He’s concerned about students looking up words in the dictionary. And he’s an elementary school teacher. Think about that.
So, congratulations to the Menifee Union School District. Despite fierce competition from Culpeper County Public Schools in Virginia, who pulled the Diary of Anne Frank because of an inquisitive passage about her vagina, you are officially, and collectively, Moron of the Week #10. After all, banning a dictionary is quite a few degrees more moronic than banning a literary work.
Moron of the Week #9
Apr 27th
It’s been nearly a year since I’ve handed out a Moron of the Week award. Part of the reason is that I don’t keep up with as broad a variety of news as I used to. But I just read about a moron in Alabama who is so deserving of this title that I had to bring it out and dust it off.
Moron of the Week #9 is a man so moronic, he brings down the intelligence of everyone around him. He demonstrates a brand of logic that is indisputably illogical. His understanding of the United States Constitution, something he should be expected to know a bit about given that he’s a public official, might be called ‘willful misinterpretation’. He’s a firm believer that America is a Christian nation. So as mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, Larry Langford’s solution to the city’s crime problem is to have the people don sackcloths and pray.
Yes, sackcloths. And ashes. To pray. Exactly what you would expect a city mayor to do in the year 2008 to keep his citizens safe from rising crime. I guess he had to one up Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia, who didn’t put on a sackcloth when he led a prayer for rain. Yes, Mayor Langford, you win.
I humbly bestow upon Mayor Larry Langford, of Birmingham, Alabama, the honorable title of Moron of the Week #9. Congratulations, Mayor! May you wear it proudly. You surely deserve it.
Moron of the Week #8
May 26th
I’m long overdue for heaping praise upon some deserving idiot out there. When I left my house this morning, I was all set to bestow the honor upon a certain slipping, sliding swine for his astute assault on the fashion sense of “garden-variety liberals.” But, I’ll save my comments on his inanity for another post. Upon my return home I learned that there is, indeed, a group of lettered scholars who are by leaps and bounds more deserving to be accorded, collectively, the honorable title of ‘Eighth Moron of the Week’.
Several teachers in a Virginia school district stood firm upon their Christian principles by refusing to distribute to their young, impressionable students a summer camp promotion which targets “Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever…” These devout souls did what any good, sensible Christians in their shoes would do. Having been ordered by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hand out materials from all non-profits if they hand out materials from any, this group of dauntless educators, whose religious sensibilities were affronted, stood their ground and refused to place this “disgusting” propaganda into the hands of their students. One cannot doubt that, when finding themselves confronted with handouts promoting beliefs with which they passionately agree, these exemplary preceptors would distribute them with vigor.
For your blatant disregard of a court order, for your shining example of Christian hypocrisy in all of its glory, and for your keen ability to let your fanciful superstitions influence your behavior in a public school classroom, I hereby name you, collectively, the Eighth Moron of the Week. You are all role models for those of your colleagues who wish to promote bigotry and hatred, who desire to poison the minds of children whose parents want nothing to do with your ancient mythology, and who scheme to turn the business of education into the business of indoctrination. Congratulations to each of you!
Moron of the Week #6
Mar 24th
We humans often encounter situations which stimulate instinctive behavior. Usually, such behavior is signaled by the release of hormones by the endocrine system. While this internal biological process is beyond our control, we often do have the capacity to control our reaction externally. Perhaps the most common stimuli that we encounter in our daily lives are sexual.
Were we wild animals, every heterosexual male might very well find himself grabbing the nearest female and humping away with abandon every time he got an erection, or every heterosexual female might find herself mounting the nearest male when aroused. The basis for such behavior is generally accepted as deriving from the need to procreate. We humans, however, at some point branded such behavior amongst ourselves as socially unacceptable. Now, we are expected to do all of our procreating in private and it is legally required that both (or all, as the case may be) involved parties be legal adults who have granted consent. We have taken a basic biological process and placed restraints upon how we may react to it. Had we not developed the capability to consciously act contrarily to how our hormones dictate, we never would have been able to have such restraints (and, much like my three dogs, wouldn’t know the difference).
But just because humans have the capability to ignore their hormones when society says they ought to, doesn’t mean that everyone actually does ignore them. In fact, because so many people fail to do so we have come to label stimuli that lead to pleasurable acts as “temptations” and have several related words and phrases. Christianity, and other religions, devote a lot of time to labeling those who act on such hormonal triggers as “sinners”. How many relationships have crumbled because of the “other man” or “other woman”? How many times have people made sexual advances at the wrong time, or to the wrong person, and found themselves in some sort of hot water for doing so? Some might say that they are weak. Some might say that they have no will power. Some might say that they are going to Hell. But most will accept that such people are human. At some point, we forgive them and move on. Of course, we don’t accept such behavior when it is destructive or harmful to others.
No, this post is not intended as a lesson on morality or fidelity (or lack thereof). I have a higher purpose today: I have found a fantastic candidate for the sixth Moron of the Week award. All of the hormonal stuff above ties into it. At least, I think it does. You see, this gentleman seems to have a hard time in managing how he responds to his endocrine system. Either that, or he’s getting different hormonal stimuli than the rest of us. I have no knowledge of his background. I mean, I don’t know if he’s got a partner to get it on with, if he has difficulty finding one, if he can’t afford a prostitute, if he has some moral objection to his hands, or if he is really turned on by what he does. All I know is that he has a really, for lack of a better word, disgusting way of getting off:
The 20-year-old Wisconsin man last year charged with having sex with a dead deer has been sentenced to probation and evaluation as a sex offender, Yahoo! reports.
Bryan James Hathaway was cuffed on a “a misdemeanour charge of sexual gratification with an animal”. The court case raised some interesting legal issues, since according to the defence, the relevant “crimes against sexual morality” statute prohibits sex with animals, but fails to mention carcasses.
If someone’s going to knock boots with dead animals, you’d think he’d try to do it somewhere he wouldn’t get caught. But not our Bryan! This guy didn’t just get caught once:
Hathaway had previously been convicted of a related offence in April
2005, when he pleaded “no contest to one felony charge of mistreatment
of an animal for the shooting death of Bambrick, a 26-year-old horse,
to have sex with the animal”.
So, let’s all raise our glasses in cheer to Bryan James Hathaway and his necrophiliac bestiality. It is debatable if he is a product of random mutation or if he just has no self-control, but either way he still more than qualifies to be the sixth Moron of the Week. As a bonus, by using the same logic as the supporters of Intelligent Design, he is living proof that ID can’t be true — anything that designed this guy has to be dumber than mud.
Moron of the Week #5
Mar 17th
Finally, someone with a theological career is willing to publicly acknowledge that homosexuality may be proven to be based in biology. Sounds like a wonderful thing, right? Finally, one of those wingnuts is actually getting it. Yeah, well, not so much. While other conservative Christians attacked him for going against the party line, homosexuals were none to happy with him either. Here’s the deal:
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and one of the country’s evangelical leaders, posted the article on his personal Web siteearlier this month.
Mr. Mohler said in the article that scientific research “points to some level of biological causation” for homosexuality.
That suggestion offended fellow conservatives, Mr. Mohler said. Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality, which they view as sinful, is a matter of choice that can be overcome through prayer and counseling.
But Mr. Mohler said he was criticized even more strongly by supporters of gay rights, who were upset by his assertion that homosexuality would remain a sin even if it were biologically based, and by his support for possible medical treatment that could change an unborn child’s sexual orientation.
I’d be willing to give the guy credit for giving up the idea that people choose their sexual orientation, but then he had to go on with his support for genetic engineering. I suppose that once enough Christians finally get educated in reality, any perceived immorality surrounding genetic engineering will be irrelevant to them as long as they can cull the world of those horribly sinful homosexuals.
So upon the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr I hereby bestow the honor of Moron of the Week, the fifth person to have earned the honor. Rare indeed is the blessed among us who can manage to piss off his colleagues, homosexuals, and supporters of human rights at the same time. Congratulations, Mr. Mohler, for your one step forward and two steps back. I suppose it goes against nature for Christians to make too much progress — they wouldn’t be conservative anymore if they did.
Moron of the Week #4
Feb 25th
The fourth Moron of the Week award is, like the last one, a group reward. This one goes out to all of the misguided supporters of assault weapons who collectively ended the career of a long time NRA member, gun supporter and hunting enthusiast.
Jim Zumbo has long been a writer for outdoor magazines and a spokesman on TV shows. Recently, he landed himself in hot water with a group of nutjobs:
Zumbo’s fame, however, has turned to black-bordered infamy within America’s gun culture — and his multimedia success has come undone. It all happened in the past week, after he publicly criticized the use of military-style assault rifles by hunters, especially those gunning for prairie dogs.
“Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity,” Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. “As hunters, we don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.”
The guy speaks sense. It’s utterly insane to hunt prairie dogs, or any animal, with a weapon made for war. So, of course, the people who suffer from the delusion that it’s their Constitutional right to do so, including the NRA, immediately turned on Zumbo. Because of the complaints of such loons (I’ll bet they’re all card-carrying Republicans), Zumbo found his association with Remington Arms Co suspended, his show “Jim Zumbo Outdoors” put on hiatus, and the end of his career at Outdoor Life.
This may be a demonstration of just how effective the NRA is in brainwashing its constituents. More likely, it’s a case of typical American ignorance. Regardless, it’s another example of the problem plaguing the modern United States — too many morons.
So I tip my hat to those of you who brought one man’s career to an end because he committed the egregious error of making a sensible observation. All of you, for your failure to understand the Constitution and your lack of common sense, are collectively the fourth Moron of the Week.
RegCure Key
Jul 5th
Since I posted an entry mentioning RegCure last month, I have been getting hits from Google and other search engines from people looking for a key for the program. If that’s you, here’s an idea: why not just fork over the handful of dollars the program costs and get the key legitimately instead of being a criminal? If you can’t bother to do that, or for some reason in your twisted, moronic mind you feel you are entitled to steal the hard work of others just because it’s digital, then fuck off. People like you are the reason we have Digital Rights Management, CD Copy Protection, and all the other crap that inconveniences law-abiding consumers who understand the difference between right and wrong.
If that’s not you and you are just looking for info about RegCure because you are interested in purchasing it, then I thank you for supporting software developers. It’s nice to know that the world hasn’t been completely taken over by morons.
