Guy Says Some Stupid Shit At A School-Board Meeting
Look, this guy's an asshole--or, at least, he said an assholish thing. Who knows? People have bad days. People say stupid shit. Dude needs a good talking-to, and he ought to apologize. Odds are, it's some dumbass thing that slipped out. Dude's probably had to sit through fifty sanctimonious sermons about "diversity and inclusion." There's at last a 50-50 chance he feels like crawling under a rock this morning.
But look...
When we get down to the point where the Washington Post is reporting on one stupid sentence one stupid guy uttered at one school-board meeting somewhere in Michigan...then we've largely licked such problems. I was more concerned to hear about the stuff being said to his kid. Thing is, kids say all kinds of mean and stupid things to other kids. The fact that they also say mean and stupid things about where other kids came from doesn't actually mean much. There's really no sense picking that stuff out and pretending that it shows there's some kind of specific problem. The general problem is that a lot of kids are stupid and vicious and will say any stupid, vicious thing they think will upset other kids. Seems like they mostly grow out of it as the other kids get big enough to punch them in the mouth...
So you've got kids saying mean and stupid things...probably some frustration with repeated sermons about Diversity Jesus...guy says a stupid thing--perhaps because he's stupid, perhaps because he's a fairly normal guy who had a stupid moment--and it all makes the Washington Post as if it's representative of the attitude of the country. Which, of course, it isn't. Because see how everybody else got mad at the guy? And how this rocketed to social media? And how it's in the Washington Post? And how everybody agrees it was stupid?
[Though, having now watched the video, it kinda does sound like that school might have a problem... Also sounds like it might be teenagers instead of little kids, which does make things different, IMO. Still: that this is national news says a lot.]
But look...
When we get down to the point where the Washington Post is reporting on one stupid sentence one stupid guy uttered at one school-board meeting somewhere in Michigan...then we've largely licked such problems. I was more concerned to hear about the stuff being said to his kid. Thing is, kids say all kinds of mean and stupid things to other kids. The fact that they also say mean and stupid things about where other kids came from doesn't actually mean much. There's really no sense picking that stuff out and pretending that it shows there's some kind of specific problem. The general problem is that a lot of kids are stupid and vicious and will say any stupid, vicious thing they think will upset other kids. Seems like they mostly grow out of it as the other kids get big enough to punch them in the mouth...
So you've got kids saying mean and stupid things...probably some frustration with repeated sermons about Diversity Jesus...guy says a stupid thing--perhaps because he's stupid, perhaps because he's a fairly normal guy who had a stupid moment--and it all makes the Washington Post as if it's representative of the attitude of the country. Which, of course, it isn't. Because see how everybody else got mad at the guy? And how this rocketed to social media? And how it's in the Washington Post? And how everybody agrees it was stupid?
[Though, having now watched the video, it kinda does sound like that school might have a problem... Also sounds like it might be teenagers instead of little kids, which does make things different, IMO. Still: that this is national news says a lot.]
posted by Winston Smith at
6:49 AM
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